It may seem early, but I’ve seen the signs. No, I’m not reading tea leaves or gazing into a crystal ball. I’ve actual seen the words on a sign. Those words are “Local Strawberries”. Two of the sweetest words in the English language.
I like strawberries. I do not not tend to frequent u-picks, although I probably should. But I am not able to pick the berries and not sample them. Okay, maybe sample is the wrong word. Gorge may be better.
As I say, it does seem early, but there are now many different varieties of strawberries, so we are no longer limited to a few weeks around the end of June or the first of July. There was a time that was strawberry season. Now, you can get local berries for pretty much the entire summer.
There are always imported berries. While they have gotten better over the years, they just don’t taste as good as local berries. At least not in my mind. It wasn’t that long ago that I used to say that imported berries put the “straw” in strawberries, because they certainly didn’t have that burst of flavour you get from the local ones.
But the local ones are out there. Now I just have to decide how to eat them. Which isn’t easy. You can have them in pie, in shortcake, or just eat them straight out of the box.
Which is one problem with strawberries. Many of the berries I buy tend to not make it home. It may have something to do with the laws of motion, but once they are in the car they tend to fall in my mouth. And once they are in my mouth, I tend to eat them. Funny how that happens.
Strawberries are one of those things that should be on my food calendar. Like the first feed of lobster. Or fiddleheads. Or hodge podge. Or… we have a lot of good food around here. Have you noticed?
