Strawberries

Oregon strawberries are here! I mean, well, they were always here, they're Oregon strawberries, but now they are in the stores and ready for consumption. I don't think Darr understands my love of Oregon strawberries. It isn't that Oregon strawberries taste better, although they do, it's everything else that makes them great. Growing up, my mom would take us out to this one farm in St. Paul every year around this time. The u-pick sign was staked by the road and as you drove up to the house the strawberry boxes were piled by the scale. It was always the same. We sampled the berries as we picked them, of course. As far as I'm concerned there is no other way to pick berries. And for just a second you'd think, as you lugged your box overflowing with berries to the scale, that the work was done. But it wasn't. Picking the berries was just the beginning. Because as soon as we got home, there were trips to the store for pectin. And there was washing the berries and removing the stems and cutting the berries and boiling the berries and... Mom always kept a huge Tupperware bowl full of cut berries, lightly sweetened with sugar, for strawberry shortcake, which we'd eat as soon as the jam was all made and in the freezer. Yep, those were good times. All this to say that no, I don't get particularly excited when California strawberries come to town, but I sure do like those Oregon berries.