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Every year I really look forward to the changing seasons and enjoying certain foods at their peak, in-season best. Asparagus and rhubarb herald the beginning of spring of course and provide some much-needed colour and hope, but for me, nothing compares to the luscious, once-a-year taste of fresh strawberries.
Like tomatoes, I used to forget each year how desperately terrible a January strawberry is going to be. Tumbling across the miles in order to garnish a dessert plate (which already makes me feel like a privileged brat), these ruby-faced imposters, often unyielding to the teeth, taste like tiny turnips (or worse, nothing at all) and are eerily white at their inner core.
So for many years now, this has culminated in a no (fresh) strawberries edict here, once the season is over.
When I was a small child, I used to spend many afternoons with an older gentleman at the end of our street who was always pottering about in his truly magnificent vegetable garden. (I also learned to carefully crouch down when I passed under his window since he was usually on sentry duty for rogue groundhogs with a BB gun across his lap and could be prone to erratic firing whilst dozing off. (Incredibly, this casual advisory warning was issued by my own parents as they waved me on. It was the Sixties…)
Together, Mr.Baron and I coaxed sweet, narrow carrots out of the ground, carefully twisted off lettuce leaves and best of all, when the day finally came, I was permitted to pluck the heart shaped jewels from his very own prized patch. The berries flourished in full sunshine so the golden straw that neatly separated the rows was pleasantly warm and soft to kneel on and I moved along carefully placing the berries on a tea towel. It felt like a sacred ceremony to me and certainly, an important task for a seven year old.
Once I had gathered a reasonable amount – and I never sampled as I went along – Mr. Baron would turn the hose pipe on (the water here was also still tepid from the sun) and gently shower a few berries in my cupped hand. Biting into my first strawberry every year brings this memory back so vividly. These freshly picked offerings were a strong blood red through and through and the perfume that came up with them was sweetly intoxicating. I never wanted ice cream or cream or anything else on them because it seemed so unholy even to my young way of thinking.
As a practical adult, I now freeze strawberries for future pies where they can be later united with their perfect chum, rhubarb. It’s a reassuring, happy feeling to know they are there in the deep freeze, chubby bags ready and able to offer up a bit of pink joy in the depths of winter. The strawberries do lose their original texture of course but the flavour and sticky red promise remains intact.
Some people, (not people that I would probably want to be friends with, mind you) might observe that all this is ridiculous, food is just food, and what a lot of fuss about nothing.
But I sometimes wonder what those people actually ARE looking forward to? I will continue to defend The Small Things and all the love and memories that intertwine with them because they matter much more than we may realize.
Oh Sue I can taste the berries as your story evolves. We’re in winter now but by Oct I hope to have my share of strawberries.
Another lovely piece, Sue……. and to every thing a season.
What a wonderfully delicious read! How do you do that? I feel as if I am 7 years old crouching down, watching you pick strawberries and place them on a towel. I am enchanted. Thank you for taking me there.