They're Back!

What's not to love? Sweet, juicy, versatile, with seeds that don't get stuck between my teeth, strawberries are high on my list of the Best Foods in Life, only slightly below coffee ice cream and lamb curry.

In Western New York where I lived for 20+ years, strawberry season is two fragrant weeks in the middle of June when the berries ripen. The whole air near the berry patches smells strongly of strawberries and everyone saves a piece of cardboard to sit on while scooting along the rows, filling box after box with sweet fruit. The little kids who are recruited to help with the picking emerge from the fields with pink juice smeared around their mouths and guilty grins. Mischievous teenagers sneak into the fields at night to steal berries and berry-flavored kisses. Housewives make jam, serve nothing but strawberry desserts for those happy weeks, and freeze some for later consumption. It's all about hurry-up-and-get-em-while-they're-ripe! Then they are gone for another year, leaving us with a few gemlike jars of jam and a sweet memory.

One of the most delightful discoveries for me when I moved to California was that strawberry season runs roughly from the end of April to the end of October with fragrant, ripe, luscious berries appearing in the markets and roadside stands all that time. When the berries are ripe, they announce themselves from 20 feet away with that wonderful smell; if the aroma doesn't transport me back to WNY, it's a fool's errand to buy them. They may look gorgeous but I'm not deceived - the scent's the important cue!

My favorite way to eat them, although they really need no embellishment at all, is to dip them in creme fraiche, then in turbinado sugar and pop the whole sweet, savory, fresh, smooth, fruity, crunchy bite into my mouth.

That first year in California, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Twelve years later, I still think so.