natural strawberry sweet (by h.chiurciu)

My friend said something that is true: a very important deal of fooding is how it makes you feel when you cook or eat something.

Today I made a natural stawberry sweet. It was almost like a jelly, actually, and I find it a very interesting activity. Natural sweets, made by cooking fruits (sometimes with a little sugar and spices) are a very simple and tasty way of saving fruits from rotening.

So, I had a whole pack of strawberries that were already getting "over-ripe". I washed and cut them in halves, and cooked with a little of sugar (no more than 5 teaspoons! fruits are already sweet enough, at least for me) and a spoonful of vinegar - don't really know why, some people add a bit of vinegar to keep the cooking pan from getting stained, others to keep the fruits from darkening with the heat or to cut the sweetness of the whole thing; sometimes i think i only do that because i watched that "courage dog" cartoon, and a ghost-aunt kept saying that the secret to her jellies was a bit of vinegar. In any case, it seems to work really fine!

I cooked it on very low fire, adding small sips of water from time to time to keep it from getting dry too soon - for me, that is when all the strawberries are not entirely melted yet.

And be ready: you need to keep standing and stiring the pan for something like 1 hour! Be sure not to let too much of it stick to the sides of the pan and burn.

After all the fruits have vanished on that beautiful and sweet-smelling red goo, stop adding water and reduce it to the point you wish. I dried it substantially, almost to the hard-candy point maybe. It got really thick and of a deep red, beautiful!

I don't know why people don't make this more often, since it is so easy and delicious! Maybe it is because it takes a reasonable amount of time to get ready, but i find it most relaxing.

The slow cooking of the ripe fruits, softly melting into a sweet and scentfull substance, transforming itself with the heat... Everything floods your senses, the smell, the colors, the sound of the whole thing boiling (or even a good music playing). It is a great way to meditate, if you ask me!

And the best part is you can make it with almost any fruit you want! Bananas, apples and mangoes are my personal favourites. You can try adding the spices you like, too: cinnamon, anise, cardamom, clover, ginger...

Enjoy yourself!

Make life a bit sweeter, and share it with your dear ones.

=)