Strawberry Pie Season

It's berry season!! I LOVE this time of year for many reasons and with one of them being, strawberry pie! Growing up, my family of seven children would go with my Mom to pick berries at a local patch. I think Mom decided against us having our own patch because we couldn't start berry fights in public and we would actually behave ourselves :)

We would spend the morning, picking, cleaning and tipping all of the berries and then spend the afternoon making jams, canning/freezing, and making 4-5 fresh strawberry pies. Life was amazing back then, right?!

Although the pies were delicious, they were far from healthy with the sugar-cookie type crust. Remember, we also lived on a dairy farm and butter was readily available at all times! Below are a few tips on why strawberries are healthy and also an updated version of strawberry pie that is much lower in calories than my Mom's version (sorry Mom!).  ENJOY!

Tip: Just one cup of strawberries has about 3grams of fiber and more than one day's worth of the recommended intake of vitamin C.

Strawberry Pie recipe from Cooking Light

Ingredients
Crust:
50 reduced-calorie vanilla wafers
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp grated orange rind (optional)

Filling:
2 cups of ripe strawberries
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
6 cups of small ripe strawberries

Reduced fat whipped topping

Prep:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place wafers in food processor and process until finely ground. Add butter, sugar and orange rind and pulse 10 more times or until wafers are moist. Press into bottom of 9-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes and cool. (You could also use a pre-made low fat graham cracker crust here).

Mash 2 cups of berries. Combine mashed berries and water in saucepan and bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain and discard pulp- keep liquid. Combine 2/3cup sugar and cornstarch in pan; add strawberry liquid from above; stirring well with whisk. Bring to boil and cook 1 minute; stirring constantly. Reduce heat, cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add lemon juice.

Place whole or sliced berries in crust (6 cups) and add sauce made above, over the top. Chill for at least three hours.

Nutrition info: 8 servings: Each serving contains 285 calories, 8.5g fat, 52.2g carbohydrate.