Last week, I posted about the CSA Danielle and I belong to. For those of you who are curious, here’s a look at what we picked up yesterday:

Our adventures in summer eating continued this week with a trip to the strawberry fields. It amazes me that this island we live on is home to several farms and vineyards in addition to the tourist resorts in Newport and the luxury homes up and down the coast. Compared to someplace like Virginia Beach, it has resisted urban sprawl remarkably well. But I digress. We did our strawberry picking last Sunday and came home with about 4 1/2 quarts.

We thought it would be fun to use some of them to make strawberry jam, so we bought some Ball jars, a package of pectin, and a big bag of sugar (if there’s one downside to homemade jam, it’s realizing just how much sugar you’re consuming). We mashed about 3 quarts of the berries and started cooking. In the end, we had 11 half-pints of delicious-looking strawberry goodness. We processed the jars and set them out on the counter to cool till the next morning.

Unfortunately, when we eagerly checked the results of our labor, we found that the jam had not set up the way it’s supposed to. According to the cookbook, we probably didn’t boil the jam hard enough or long enough to activate the pectin. In any case, what we had was about 88 ounces of strawberry syrup.

What does one do with 88 ounces of strawberry syrup?

Here are some ideas we’ve come up with: use it to top French toast, pancakes, or Belgian waffles (obviously); use it as an ice cream topping; make strawberry shortcake; make strawberry vodka martinis (strawbertinis?); or mix it with club soda to make strawberry soda. We’ve also used it as a topping on angel food cake. Next week, we might try to make strawberry ice cream with it.

One other quick note about getting farm fresh produce: by the end of the week, our fridge is almost empty. We’re much more mindful of how we eat and of making sure we eat what we buy. In the past, when we were trying to anticipate every possible food need during the weekly commissary trip, our fridge was always full — full of food that often went bad before we could eat it. This has introduced us to a whole new way of eating.