Frozen Strawberries

Old habits die hard...I'm saying it because I recall my childhood in Russia and I remember that every summer every Russian family was canning like crazy in order to have something to eat over the cold winter season. That's why every summer I get "Canning Rush". Even living in America now and having fresh fruit and vegetable available all year around at store, I get this urge felling in summer that I need to do some canning. So, that was my preface, now see my effort and recipe for....Frozen Strawberries!

I already have strawberry jam, so I decided to do something different. Frozen strawberries sounded like not a bad idea. All you need is 7 C. sugar and 4 C. water and enough strawberries to fill up you containers. I had 4 big cases of strawberries and it gave me about 4 liters of mashed syrup.

First, mix water and sugar together and bring it to boil and then let it cool down completely.

Clean and prepare enough strawberries for containers you have at hand. I sorted my berries and filled up a couple of clean and dry jars just with the whole berries. I froze then without syrup. The rest was washed and sliced in halves.

You can either slice berries or leave them whole. I wanted mine to be crashed so I can easily use them for lemonade or smoothies. Blender or Cuisinart machine will do the job just fine.

I turned my machine for 3-5 minutes to make sure they all processed.

Fill up the prepared container with crashed strawberries about half of their volume.

Add the sugar syrup to make them full. Place the lid and freeze!

I made me a nice cup of lemonade with lemon slice from the leftover I've got.

Creme-brulee video

Hello from London, the land of world-wide cuisines! I tried creme-brulee dessert already twice and I loved it very much. So, I promised myself that after I come back to America, I will try to cook them and see if they will turn out as good as English ones. But since I'm away from my home, I will post the video I had found on Internet and let you enjoy the process. Video is here.

Baked Tiliapia

This recipe wasn't planned at all. I was happy to find previously frozen really cheap whole tilapia at the Fish Department of Wal-Mart and I decided to cook it. My fish was already clean inside and out, so if you are buying your fish somewhere else, make sure you clean it, wash it, take guts out and scale. Wash fish again and set aside.


I cooked my fish stuffed with cabbage. If you don't like fried cabbage, just skip this step and move to the next one. All other preparations will be the same for fish without any stuffing.


But for cabbage-lovers it takes a little bit longer. I bought a bag of pre-cut cabbage. They called it here "Cole Slaw Salad" (Russian: Капустный Салат). I dumped all cabbage into a frying pan with two tablespoons of vegetable oil. Cook it for 5-7 minutes. Add salt, pepper, 1 bay leave and 1 small can of tomato sauce. Fry another 3-5 minutes. Set aside to cool down.

Now baking part. It can turn out into a lot of cleaning afterwords, so I took a piece of aluminum foil and lined up my baking sheet to save me time on cleaning.

Fish loves veggie oil, so be generous on greasing your baking sheet. Also fish likes salt and there is nothing more horrible in my cuisine then unflavored fish or feeble witticism. :) So, season your fish generously with salt and pepper inside and outside as well. Place seasoned fish on baking sheet and stuff as much fried cabbage inside its tummy as you can. Skip this step if you don't like stuffing.

Now a little trick secret that I learned while I was trained as a chef. Prepare fry sauce. It is how Americans called mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. A couple of tablespoons of mayo and a little bit of ketchup mixed together will give you a special nice crust on the top of fish.

Apply the sauce on fish and place it in the oven for 30 minutes. Temperature 375 by Fahrenheit.

Vyalya! The stuffed tilapia is ready! Hot, warm or cold - it is good and appetizing at any temperature to consume!


I left my fish at the kitchen table. The next morning I found....


a pile of bones! Sergey ate it all, even cabbage part! Thanks goodness, I had two of them! :)