What do you do with 15 pounds of strawberries? Eat some, bake some, freeze some. This past weekend, I went strawberry picking, which is, of course, how I ended up with 15 pounds of these delicious little balls of nutrients. Berry picking is one of my favorite summer activities. First strawberries, then blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Strawberries are one of the more challenging berries to pick because they are so low to the ground, so you have to either kneel the whole time, or not mind a muddy butt. They don’t last more than a week in the fridge, so if you pick very many, you’ll end up having to freeze some. And that means hulling. Strawberries are pretty easy to hull with a good knife, but it takes a while. It took me an hour to hull about seven pounds.

This recipe comes from a small, unassuming, and rather generic looking spiral-bound cookbook, 101 Things to do with a Tortilla. I received this book as a gift a few years ago, and at first totally dismissed it. It uses a lot of canned ingredients, which usually isn’t my thing, and it has no photos. But somewhere along the line, I decided to give it a go, and was immediately impressed. The recipes are very easy, very fast, and very inexpensive. While I’m not usually into cooking from cans, which so often contain soggy and gray produce that barely resembles the fresh version of the same, sometimes it’s just so easy! And certain foods actually taste good from a can, such as tomatoes and beans.

For this recipe, I paired the canned goods and supermarket produce with ground beef from our favorite local beef farmers, Bass Farms, who use sustainable growing techniques and minimal chemicals. They have a little farm stand off the highway just outside of the Shawnee National Forest, nested amongst rolling hills and forests of tall, bright green trees with thick undergrowth. The stand sells beef as well as a variety of summer produce, including tomatoes and peaches, and flowers too. We try to get to their stand at least once a month during the summer.