Strawberry milk is my new favorite beverage, and it’s not even summer yet.  I don’t know why it took me so long to start making this, but now that I’m doing it, I can’t stop.  I’m using frozen, local strawberries, but I imagine this will be wonderful with the ripe, warm strawberries of summer, the dusky-dark-red ones that you have to eat a few hours after they’re picked, before the beads of sweated juice turn from ripeness into rot.

When I was a kid, I associated strawberry milk with this product made by Nestle Quik.  Do you remember Quik? 

With the Quik rabbit?  I, being a branded consumer, valued Quik products because they turned my much-dreaded glass of milk with meals into more-tolerable chocolate milk and because, more importantly, their products featured a bunny.  (Of course, now their ads look pretty creepy; check out how the bunny is chatting with “Drox,” his friend from Hydrox.).  Still, I stuck with the chocolate stuff; even at that age, I knew something was wrong with the strawberry milk powder.  Strawberries just don’t come in that form naturally.

Strawberry milk, when made with delicious strawberries and good quality milk, is a refreshing and nutritious beverage.  Lately, perhaps wistfully thinking of summer, I haven’t been able to get enough of this stuff.  It started when I bought some frozen, local strawberries at the farmers’ market a few weeks ago, and brought them home where there was a half gallon of raw goat milk in the refrigerator.  I made some strawberry milk, and was amazed.  It’s the perfect, refreshing treat at the end of a long work day.  It has the taste of really good quality strawberry ice cream - the kind that tastes of fresh fruit - without any sugar poured in.

Easy strawberry milk

2-4 strawberries (fresh and very ripe or frozen)

1 cup (or a little more) raw whole milk (goat, cow or sheep)

If your strawberries are frozen, thaw them completely in a pan or microwave and pour them, juice and all, into your glass.  Mash them up with a fork, so that they’re reduced to small bits and a lot of juice.  Pour in your milk and stir.