WIAW 119

Strawberries!!!

Er, um, was that my outside voice?

All right, many of you have been eating strawberries for months. Indeed, our supermarket had large red blobs with white centers (like radishes? but sort of pointy and mushy) they call strawberries… and this year I even gave in and bought them so I could write a recipe with them in time for other people to use it. (After all, for years those were all I knew…) But now the real things are coming into Greenmarket – smaller, tart (rather than either just unripe/sour or bland and sweet) with tons of flavor.

So I’ve been fooling around with a muffin recipe. I mean, I like my corn muffins and all, that’s always been my favorite basic muffin, but I want a different base for variations. What I really need is a good muffin recipe in time for blueberries – but strawberries are a great place to begin.

Oh, it’s so terrible, we have to eat all the experiments… even those that are not good enough to share with you…  Aren’t you sorry for us?

So on Monday for breakfast I had strawberry muffins…  and my usual protein shake of kefir, orange juice, and an unflavored, unsweetened protein powder. Someday I should really experiment more with that… Coffee, too.

Strawberries were not the only produce I bought, of course… I’m finally well into salad season. Young leaves of several kinds of lettuce, radishes, scallions, and snap peas, so tender I can eat them raw… I tossed them together, added black beans and cheese, and an oil and vinegar dressing. I eat salad for lunch all summer, and never get bored, because it varies with the season – a changing palette of vegetables mixed and matched with a variety of beans, tofu, eggs, cheese, and meat, accompanied by crackers or potato salad or bread… In this case, I ate sweet potato crackers and, as usual, drank water.

Now, I’d love to continue this progression and tell you about putting together a righteous stirfry of fresh vegetables, or delicate fish steamed with those snap peas, or… But it was one of Those evenings… I waved a vague hand at Rich and said something on the order of “There’s Stuff in a Thing. Heat it…”

When I made the beef stew I posted about earlier that day, I made extra. I did have plans for it, but plans change in the face of migraine, and, well, this is the reason I like to have some sort of cooked food around… He heated it, we ate it, it was good… Stew does reheat so beautifully… (though that’s certainly not a beautiful picture…)

But then, he poured my water, and added my usual bit of lemon (I usually have ice and lemon or lime at dinner – and drink it from the pretty glass, rather than the one that’s been on my desk all day.) And he asked “Would you like a strawberry in that water?” Why, yes, that sounded lovely! I’ve been looking at all those infused waters – and certainly it will be nice to have an elegant one that’s had a chance to macerate – but that single halved strawberry with the piece of lemon in my glass added a surprising amount of flavor! Subtle, certainly, but present.

Nice to find something so simple that feels a treat.

So anyway – I hope all of you who wanted to get the newsletter did – and got both versions… sorry about that. The links work in the second one… I know what it did wrong, though I’m still not sure why, but I can prevent it in future. (I think.)

But it’s June!Stop and smell the roses – or at least admire them… (The prettiest don’t always have much scent.)

Go forth and eat strawberries – or peaches, which I got this time last year in North Carolina, or a pineapple like the one a friend showed his mother holding – she grew it in her yard in Florida! Whatever is fresh and wonderful around you, enjoy it!