I don’t know about you, but I could sit very happily at a table, perhaps in an orchard of blooming apple trees, with a book in hand and a bowl of cool strawberries at my elbow. I would include smooth silver spoons, clotted cream, warm scones, a cool breeze and warm, dappled sunlight. The table is covered with a crisply ironed white linen cloth, shiny with use, with traceries of indecipherable embroidered monograms. The vision does not include troubling details: who baked the warm scones? How did I come to be sitting in this orchard? Is it teatime? Sometimes it is hard to manage slippery elusive daydreams about Grantchester, in England, just before the Great War, without dratted everyday questions popping up and interfering. How does one go about becoming the muse of a dead poet? Will there be snacks? I love the beginning of strawberry season.
Logic has no place in the romance of food. Strawberry season is upon us. I hope you are gorging yourself on sweet red berries and slim volumes about lost youth. Find a wind-swept (though sunny) corner of the back porch and enjoy a solitary picnic. Seize the fleeting moment. Carpe diem.
Strawberries are all well and good as the flashy main element of strawberry shortcake. They are divine with whipped cream. They make muesli palatable. They punch up overnight oats. Add them to a bowl of blueberries and call it a well-balanced meal. But have you tried ever them as bruschetta? With balsamic vinegar? And goat cheese? As a savory taste treat – not a sweet dessert? What a mind-blowing concept! It was all news to me when I saw Strawberry Bruschetta listed on a menu at a neighborhood luncheon spot. As my sainted father would say, “Holy mackerel!”
Strawberries are sweet enough to eat alone, but their power is always enhanced with a dab cream and a wee pinch of sugar. A handful of sliced strawberries scattered over your morning bowl of muesli is the easiest treat; sticks and bark never tasted better. I like strawberries, homemade granola and some vanilla yogurt as a morning pick-me-up. After dinner, sitting on the back porch, neglecting the evening news, is perfect time for sliced strawberries over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
You don’t have to restrict your strawberries to dessert. Strawberries will go nicely with my container garden basil:Strawberry Salad
Strawberry bruschetta is something to enjoy for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack time in this short strawberry season, but you can use store-bought berries all summer long, for strawberry shortcake, and strawberries over ice cream, strawberries in ice cream, or strawberries dipped in sugar or chocolate. Add this bruschetta concept to your list of new summer favorites. As the spring warms things up in Maryland, the strawberries will ripen and what a sweet and glorious time it will be.
Martha has strong opinions about strawberries, as we would expect. Pay attention: Types of Strawberries
Strawberry Goat Cheese Bruschetta
Strawberry Bruschetta With Ricotta
“Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? … oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”
—Rupert Brooke
