Cleaning strawberries

Here's a quick tip I picked up somewhere (sorry, forgot the source!) I just thought about it today as I was cleaning some strawberries for one of my Platinum Chef Challenge recipes (coming to a blog near you, this one!, soon!!) :)

To preserve as much flavour as possible in strawberries, do not rinse them under running water. Since strawberries are very porous, they will absorb all that water and lose some of their fruity goodness. You don't want watery strawberries, right?! :) Instead, dampen a paper towel and use it to gently clean each berry. You will have clean fruit with plenty of flavour!

Here's an extra hint - if you only buy a few organically-grown things, make strawberries (and other fresh berries) one of them! The porous nature of the berries makes them not only absorb water when rinsing them, but also absorb the chemicals and pesticides sprayed on non-organically grown produce.

Hope this helps you enjoy strawberry season!