Echoes of “Strawberry shortcake cream on top tell me the name of your sweetheart…” fill up the school yard as little girls chant the rhyme while jump-roping. The chants are only stopped by the outburst of giggles that erupt when the girl jumping stops and declares the name of her sweetheart. It is determined by the letter of the alphabet that is shouted out when she stops.
That was then, many years ago in a school yard in North America. Now present day. I don’t have a sweetheart, well not a conventional one that is. If you asked me now, living in Italy, during late spring/ early summer I would and I will answer you. Have you guessed what it is?
Yes, strawberries.
Right now they are in season and I love them. There is no epitome of the perfect strawberry; but a description of bright red, juicy, sweet sometimes tart berries with brown spotted surfaces and a green hat is a good place to start.
But I’m not the best person to ask about epitome, since I have a known love affair with strawberries. I’m told that my ‘perfect’ strawberries, a long time ago were miniscule, half- eaten, sometimes semi-squished pale pink berries covered in red clay soil. My mother claims that barely walking, wearing my clean rompers I would crawl the 200 meters from our family home to her vegetable garden. My mission would be to bring her back a gift of strawberries-more like a macerated strawberry since my tiny hands would drop them on the grass leaving a trail of berries for the birds. There must have been something good about the barely edible berries since my mother has fond memories of receiving the gifts.
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| Bite size strawberry shortcakes |
While at our local fresh produce grocer my housemate and I got a bit excited. There was a huge crate of freshly picked strawberries looking at us at the cash counter. Each time we took a breath in it was like we were breathing in strawberries. Literally intoxicating to the point that we couldn’t leave them there, they were giant, bright red and they were talking to us telling us that they wanted, and needed to come home with us and be devoured. So that’s what we did. Laden with a week’s worth of fruit and vegetables we somehow made room on in our bicycle baskets and took the strawberries home.
It might not be obvious but the strawberries did not last for long. If anything they have made our apartment smell like strawberries. Well that's what a friend of ours said when they dropped by to visit on the same day as our strawberry intoxication. As soon as we got home we started making jam. Filling the house and probably our whole apartment block with the rich aroma of rich jam. Not the ordinary type of sweet, strawberry jam that you are used to. Thanks to a recipe from a classmate of mine I have learnt a way of making some extraordinary jam. This strawberry jam is now made with an infusion of blood oranges, vanilla bean and the secret ingredient of chili flakes- I haven’t quite mastered the chili flake proportion as I may have been overly generous with the amount I put into the pot, well it gives the jam an extra kick!
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| Strawberry jam ingredients minus the vanilla bean and the chili flakes |
Besides making jam, I have tried and succeeded at making strawberry shortcake cookies, strawberry granola, strawberry juice and breakfast smoothies and last night, my housemate made us try out strawberry cocktails- not too shabby. Next on the list might be strawberry ice cream.
