Text 9122, 93 rader
Skriven 2008-06-17 17:58:08 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Strawberry Season
=========================
Strawberry season starts slowly in New England. Sometime around the 
second week of June, signs start appearing by the roadsides. Mostly
hand-painted, they announce that the fields are ready for picking. 
Some, like the one at right, spell it out and give the name of the 
farm you'll be visiting. Others are simpler: There might just be a 
big picture of a strawberry with an arrow pointing down the side 
road.

By the middle of the third week, the fields are filled with folks 
picking berries, and the farm stands have opened, offering pint- 
and quart-sized baskets of fruit already picked. Churches and 
civic groups start advertising their Strawberry Supper fundraisers, 
where for a few dollars one can get a decent meal finished off with
 delicious homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert. If you're 
lucky, it will be real shortcake biscuits under those berries, and 
not those nasty yellow spongecake cups that people from Away try 
to call "shortcake."

My favorite time to pick strawberries is the early morning. Many 
of the farms in the area open for picking around 7:00 am. The 
sun is new in the sky, there's usually a bit of fog in the fields, 
and the dew is still on the berry plants. A lot of people bend over 
the rows as they pick, but I prefer to put on old clothes and a pair 
of kneepads and crawl along the row at berry level, finding juicy 
red treasures hiding under the leaves as I creep along, pushing a 
shallow flat tray in front of me.

By nine in the morning, the fog has burned off and the sun is high 
enough in the sky to start baking the fields, but my wife, daughter, 
and I are ready to go home anyway, having picked about twenty pounds 
of berries. That sounds like a lot, but they go fast: we eat some 
out of hand, make shortcake (of course,) and strawberry-rhubarb pie; 
there are batches of strawberry preserves to put up, and we also 
freeze some for later use. (We freeze some small amounts of every 
berry that comes ripe in season so that at the end of the summer we 
can make a Mixed Berry Preserve as well.)

Unfortunately, strawberries here are a cool-weather crop and by the 
first couple weeks of July they're out of season again. I have some
 everbearing varieties in my garden that will supply us with a small 
amount through late August, but the big rush will be over and 
the pick-your-own places will be moving on to other fruits like 
raspberries, blueberries, and orchard fruits later towards September 
and October.

While it lasts, though, the berries are everywhere, as much part of 
our New England heritage as maple sugar in February, apples in 
September, and pumpkins in October.


"Shortcake" is a slightly sweetened biscuit, baked up on the dry 
side so it can drink up plenty of strawberry juice when it's topped 
with berries and whipped cream. If you've only had "strawberry 
hortcake" on those horrid yellow spongecake cups that taste like 
they've been carved out of a Hostess Twinkie, do yourself an 
enormous favor and try my grandmother's recipe for real shortcake:

    SHORTCAKE

    2 cup flour
    4 teaspoon baking powder
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
    5 tablespoon butter
    2/3 cup milk

    Preheat the oven to 425

    Butter and lightly flour an 8-inch cake pan or a cookie sheet.

    Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Cut 
the butter in bits and work it into the flour mixture with a pastry 
blender or your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Slowly stir 
in the milk, using just enough to hold the dough together. Turn out 
onto a floured board and knead for a minute or two. Put the dough 
into the cake pan, or roll or pat it 3/4 inch thick and cut it 
into eight 2-inch rounds, using a biscuit cutter. Arrange the 
rounds on a cookie sheet and bake them for 10 - 12 minutes (or 
bake the larger cake for 12 - 15 minutes.) Split with two forks 
while still warm. Spread with butter if you like, fill with 
sugared berries, and serve warm with heavy cream or whipped 
cream.

http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/2008/06/strawberry-season.html

---
http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/ - Dave's Cupboard - Food and 
Restaurant Reviews; If I post it here in NCE, you'll find it 
blogged with photos at Dave's Cupboard.

http://bacon-labels.blogspot.com/ - A gallery of bacon package labels.
(The extra shelf in Dave's Cupboard.
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)