Photo by zeebleoop from our Flickr photopool.

Around mid-June there is happiness in our household because the local strawberries are showing up at the farmers’ markets. Yes, we’ve been awash in California strawberries since the early part of spring, but strawberries are notoriously poor travelers and don’t last that long off the vine. The ones from Cali have white cores and usually require a few bags of sugar to taste sweet.

Local strawberries, though, are usually red all the way through save a hot pink line. And they do not last — buy them at the U District market on Saturday morning and they’re mush on your counter on Sunday evening. But when they are local, they are worth every bite, even if that means you’re going to have find a use for that pint of strawberries that night.

Local around here depends on where you live, of course. The farmers’ markets and grocery stores in Seattle proper are mostly full of Skagit Valley strawberries. Redmond and Bellevue used to have hundreds of acres of berry farms, but now they’re office parks and subdivisions. There are still some U-Pick farms scattered in the Snoqualmie Valley and Fall City, with Remlinger Farms being the most notable.

Bainbridge Island has one last berry farm left, a remnant of what was once a vibrant industry for Japanese-American farmers before they were interned during WWII. In the South Sound you can find berry farms in the Kent and Nisqually valleys and around Olympia.

In fact, if you’re willing to do the work at a U-Pick, you’re probably no more than 30 miles from a berry patch. The local climate and soil are perfect for strawberries. In the olden days, strawberry season would give way in July to raspberry season, which would then wrap around blackberry season as well. This year’s cold spring has meant late harvests on the Eastside and on Bainbridge, but let’s just think of it as a delayed blessing. After all, some years you can’t eat local strawberries on the Fourth.

So, how do you preserve these fragile flavor bombs from their painfully short half-life off the vine? Do what I do: Make sorbet.

This is essentially the same sorbet recipe as one I got from SOAR, which collected recipes on the Internet back in the days before the Web. (Yes, there was an Internet before the Web.) See if you can spot the difference.

STRAWBERRY SORBET
1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1 pint strawberries
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons port or marsala
1 ice cream maker (preferably a countertop variety since this makes about 1 quart. If you want to use one of those old 6 quart models with the rock salt and the ice, increase the recipe thusly. If you’re using one of those hand-cranked models, I hope you have a really strong arm.)

Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and turn on the heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves, turn it up to about medium and bring it to a boil (gentle, not rolling) for about 5 minutes; don’t stir. Remove from burner, set aside until cool (30 minutes or so).

Meanwhile, wash and de-cap the strawberries. Put berries in a blender or a food processor and puree until pureed. (If you don’t have a processor or a blender, try a vegetable masher.)

Put the strawberry puree in a bowl. Add orange juice, port/marsala, and the sugar syrup. Mix well. Fire up the ice cream maker and make ice cream as the manufacturer intended. Remove sorbet from freezer, put in a freezer proof container, and put in the freezer for 2 hours to harden. (Or, you could just eat it soft-serve out of the ice cream maker.)

Makes around 1 quart, +/- a cup.