Strawberries

Strawberries are delicious and nutritious! They have a juicy, sweet and sour taste, great for desserts and in salads.

Nutrition

One cup of these berries will give you 140% of the Daily Value of Vitamin C. They also have flavonoids. Both Vitamin C and flavonoids are good for your heart and arteries. It's interesting that they are red and shaped like a heart!

They also contain ellagic acid, a compound that fights cancer.

They are a good source of folate and potassium, fiber, manganese and silicon. Silicon is important to keep bones and connective tissue strong. Silicon helps you to absorb calcium.

This fruit does have sugar, so be careful. You may like to eat them with a fatty food (like avocados, walnuts) or protein food to keep blood sugar balance. But I find them less sweet than other fruits.

Buy them organic

Conventional strawberries are heavily sprayed with pesticides. 39 different pesticides are used on them! And 90% of the berries tested for pesticides showed contamination above safe levels.

They are the most heavily sprayed crop, part of the dirty dozen identified by the Environmental Working Group. So organic is really the way to go.

Buy the fruit when they are red, because the don't ripen after picking. Plan to eat them soon, since they will go bad quickly.

Look for this fruit in early spring. They prefer to grow in cooler weather. My gardener husband Alan has tried to grow them in a Texas spring, but to no avail. They don't like the heat. We are trying again for a fall crop; we'll see.

Here's how you can prepare them:

--use them chopped up over breakfast cereal

--blend them up with milk (soy, almond, cow, rice) for a smoothie

--blend them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to make a salad dressing

--blend them with silken tofu for a pudding. Add stevia or raw honey to taste

--add to a fruit salad

--make into jam or sauce

--add to jello, puddings, and pies for a light dessert

--add to a salad with spinach and toasted walnuts

--dip into chocolate!

Organic, ripe fresh red strawberries are a real treat!

Food for thought:

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony"--Gandhi