Posts Tagged ‘fresh strawberries’
Strawberries Galore
Cyndie’s strawberry patch is now producing fruit and doing so in quantities that have her plotting endless ways to use them. It’s a good thing we have freezer space because we already have more strawberries than we can eat. Not that we aren’t doing our best to consume massive quantities while they are fresh.
On my birthday, Cyndie made me a special treat to rival my Dairy Queen favorite: a Frozen Hot Chocolate.
She created a frozen strawberry-flavored hot chocolate topped with a drizzle of her homemade hot fudge sauce. It was delectable.
Then she picked more berries.
Soon, there was a strawberry cream cheese pie to be taste-tested.
It passed my inspection.
Last week, Cyndie baked shortcake biscuits to sweeten me up with strawberry shortcake desserts.
It worked.
We are having a berry, berry delicious time finding creative ways to take advantage of the bounty of fresh home-grown strawberries.
Please pass the jam…
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Looking Fine
Well, I didn’t take a picture of the cut hay field, but Cyndie did.
Despite the downpour we received on the day I got home from my bike trip, the land is really dry around here. That means the horses kick up a lot more dust when stomping to shake flies loose and areas of grass are turning brown. Luckily, the strawberry patch Cyndie put in last year is not showing obvious signs of being too dry.
In fact, the plants are bearing fruit!
Doesn’t that look fine?
Fresh homegrown strawberries taste so much better than any other version of strawberries. There is nothing quite like biting into produce just picked from the garden.
Things tend to taste even more fine than they look.
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Home Grown
Cyndie’s strawberry patch is still in its infancy but we did get a pretty respectable first crop this year.
Toward the end, I noticed a squirrel had taken quite a liking to being inside the netted perimeter fence. Every time I walked by, the intruder would startle and panic, botching several times in his attempt to climb out before succeeding.
I think Cyndie had picked most of the ripened fruit by the time the squirrel developed its interest.
Eating a perfectly ripened strawberry that was picked from the plant that very day has me wanting to evermore avoid the overly-firm, tasteless version of the fruit available year-round in grocery stores.
There is just no comparison.
Of course, my heightened sensitivity to a problematically short window of ideal ripeness for all fruit plays a big role in determining my level of satisfaction. The duration of time between too green and too ripe for my liking when it comes to bananas is measured in minutes. For oranges and apples, it’s more like days.
Texture plays a big part in influencing my acceptance of most fruits. Growing strawberries at home and serving them shortly after they were picked has spoiled me a little.
I may need to revert to only eating fruit that’s in-season like we used to do before global shipping became an everyday occurrence.
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Relative Something 