berries Archives - Mamma's Cooking

Having different sauce recipes in your repertoire to change up meals and desserts can expand your menus tremendously. Sauces are not just for savory dishes. My strawberry sauce is simple and delicious! Strawberries are so tasty and sweet. My kids love them, so when they are on sale, I buy them up! Often that means that they can start to go bad before we have had a chance to finish eating them. With all the amazing fresh fruit and vegetables coming into season, they are more cost effective and much more abundant. Here is this crazy easy recipe that you can use to top pancakes or waffles, ice cream or yogurt or whatever you like!

Strawberry Sauce

Ingredients

16 ounces of fresh strawberries, sliced

2 Tablespoons of sugar (add ½ Tablespoon at a time and taste because it depends on how sweet your strawberries are naturally)

2 Tablespoons of water

1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, optional (but I think it adds such a great depth of flavor! Doesn’t taste vinegary)

Directions

Add all the ingredients to a sauce pan on medium high heat on the stove. Stir every couple of minutes until the fruit breaks down and it becomes a sauce, about 15 minutes. Serve warm over pancakes or cool and pour over ice cream or swirl in with yogurt. Can keep in the fridge 3 or 4 days in an airtight container.

You can also make this with blueberries, raspberries or blackberries and just adjust the sugar based on how sweet the fruits are. Don’t let those summer fruits go to waste!

There are just so many uses for this sauce. You can make ice cream sundaes, pour this sauce over gf angel food cake or my biscuits for a version of strawberry shortcake.

What is your favorite summer sauce? How do you use it?

Karina had her 9 month appointment last week and the doctor gave me the green light to give her any food except shellfish, peanut butter and no whole milk to drink yet. Now I don’t even know where to start! Here is a menu of what she ate over the weekend:

Saturday
Breakfast: whole milk yogurt with blueberries + cheerios
Lunch: cheddar cheese cubes, left over grilled chicken (cubed) and some peach (cubed)
Dinner: mini pasta shells with squash (leftover frozen puree – thawed in the microwave) with parmesan + some blueberries for desert.

Sunday
Breakfast: Her first meal ordered in a restaurant! I ordered one egg scrambled and some turkey sausage. We kept her occupied while waiting for the food with a Zwiebek biscuit. She loved it!
Lunch: yogurt with peaches
Dinner: mini pasta shells with squash, a couple of cubes of cheddar cheese and some leftover grilled chicken cubed. Blueberries for dessert. I couldn’t find the strawberries I had set aside for her in the fridge.

I set them aside because I made a great, simple dessert the other night. I saw this on the food network, Barefoot Contessa I think. Take some fresh berries (raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries) pour a couple tablespoons of balsamic vinegar over the fruit and a couple tablespoons of sugar. Mix together and let sit while you eat dinner. After dinner, spoon into dishes with whipped cream or cool whip and some fresh mint if you have it. Soooooo goooood!

Karina tasted her first soft serve ice cream. Her face I’m told was priceless. I had her in a front carrier, so couldn’t see 🙂 She wasn’t too sure of the cold, but seemed to love the taste and asked for more.

She is still taking about 3-4 8oz. bottles a day. She has been a big drinker for a while now, but I was thinking this would slow down because she is eating so much food! But not yet…Karina is only 9 months though, so I’m sure this will start to slow down at some point.

I haven’t tried salmon yet..probably later this week when my parents come to town.