Pan

July 5, 2012

The panic hit me hard yesterday when I thought I had missed strawberry season. The thought of no strawberry jam, no strawberry syrup, no sorbet and no smoothies, no strawberry-apple sauce and no summery strawberry pie in the dead of winter were more than enough to light a fire under my butt and I hunted down the last strawberry picking day to be had in the county. I would have driven further, though. A strawberryless year is a hard thing to swallow. So, last night, the five of us headed straight to the patch for an hour and a half of determined picking. We managed to forage 26 quarts and in the last 24 hours 12 of them have been transformed into freezer berries, 8 turned into jam, 2 set aside for gobbling and 1 turned into a pie. The rest are waiting for things like sorbet and shortcake. It's going to be a tasty year.