It's July. In the olden days, strawberry season would be over, but now with ever-bearing strains, local strawberries are still appearing weekly at my market. What to do when I overdo the shopping and end up with leftovers that are just a week bit past their "best before" date? Make - and freeze - strawberry sauce - aka coulis. This comes from Canadian Living which specifies using 1 cup of berries. That's not a lot of berries or sauce - I quadrupled it and cut back on the sugar. This freezes in a way that still enables me to spoon out smaller portions, and either let it melt at room temperature or zap it for a few seconds in the microwave. Only one's imagination limits how it can be used!

1 cup hulled and quartered strawberries
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 TB lemon juice
2 tsp cornstarch
1 TB water

"In saucepan, bring strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch and 1 tbsp water to a boil over medium heat. Stir constantly until bubbling, sauce is glossy, thickened and the strawberries are soft, about 6 minutes. Using hand blender, purée until smooth. Strain through fine-mesh sieve, pressing lightly on solids. Cover and refrigerate until cold (and for up to 3 days.) Makes about 1 cup, but can easily be doubled." See Tips below.

Notes and Tips...

• Strawberries - those I had were small-ish so I simply cut them in half instead of quartering
• Sugar - for 4 cups of berries I used only 1/2 cup sugar (instead of 1 cup)
• Cornstarch - in my experience, it is always best to mix cornstarch with water before adding it to anything - so I mixed the 2 tsp of cornstarch with the 1 TB of water before adding it to the strawberries and sugar
• Blender - the tender little berries I used did not need to be puréed much - just a quick whiz
• Strain - for fancy-schmancy "coulis" I can see pushing it through a sieve to make the sauce spectacularly clear, but i figured strawberry jam has "seeds" in it, and so shall my sauce.