The Dinner Files

The last time I picked strawberries I was… the same age as my son is now: 6. My mom drove my brother and me across the country – or at least the part between Minneapolis and Spokane, Washington, where lived (and still do live) my aunt and uncle – breaking speed limits and listening to Neil Diamond all the way. My dad met us in Spokane and the four of us continued to Sequim, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula to visit his friend from high school who had moved out there with his French wife, Marie-Claude.

Culinarily, it was a revelatory trip. In Sequim we picked mussels off the rocky shore and Marie-Claude steamed them in white wine and blew my mind right out of my head. We also grilled beer-basted salmon steaks. Everything about that was new and fascinating me: grilling fish, cooking with beer, salmon. The rich, flakey, tender dinner established a love of salmon that served me very well during the many times I spent months in France as a vegetarian and salmon would be the only main dish I could order.

But first, in Spokane, we picked strawberries in my aunt and uncle’s garden. I picked and picked and picked and then made strawberries and cream for everyone. And – I could be making this up, but the memory of it is clear – I came up with the idea of smashing a few strawberries into the cream before pouring it over the other strawberries. It may very well have been my first recipe. The irony is not lost on anyone who knows me, because to know me is to know this: I don’t like strawberries. No, I’m not allergic. I just really do not like them. No, really, I’ve had really good ones warm and ripe from the field. I’ve tasted the best strawberries humans can grow. It’s not them, it’s me.

The “recipe” stands though. Strawberry aficionados have reported back that it is lovely: smash the ripest strawberries (a bit over-ripe is just fine) into the cream before pouring it over the other berries. If the berries are good they shouldn’t need any sugar sprinkled on, but I have no idea how much of a sweet tooth you may have, so sprinkle away if need be.

So when our CSA farm sent out a notice that their strawberry fields were in hyper-production mode and scads of berries were going to waste every weekend when the pickers weren’t working and that all were invited to come and pick flats for $10 each (plus all you could eat in the field), I packed up my strawberry-loving son and called a strawberry-loving friend and we headed to Winters, California for a day of strawberry picking and picnicking.

We each picked a flat, broke for a picnic lunch of cheese, crackers, hard-boiled eggs, blanched fava beans from my friend’s garden, and homemade molasses cookies she had whipped up, and then headed back to the field for another flat.

I woke up the next morning to a strawberry-scented house and burnt shoulders.

What does someone who doesn’t like strawberries do with all those strawberries? Well, I hulled and froze half a flat for my dashing husband to use to make smoothies, brought a flat to Ernest’s class for show-and-tell-and-eat, and the other half-flat…. Since, in my experience, everyone else loves the things, we gave several pints away and Ernest and my dashing husband made pretty short work of the remaining pints. (We have a few berries left, so tonight I’m going to surprise the lads with a bit of strawberry fool for dessert.)

I have been amply rewarded for my seemingly generous strawberry behavior. When I gave a pint to our neighbor she returned the favor my bequeathing unto me a cabbage fresh from her garden.

Now that’s some produce I can get excited about. Now I just need to decide if I’m going to braise it in butter or sautee it with onions and seeds….

We had it again, this time with green garlic from our “farm box.” Even better. It’s a new family favorite, although, truth be told, Ernie preferred the long-stemmed strawberries that came in the same box: “Mama, look! I made up a game! You spin the strawberry and take a bite! Look at all my bites!”

Messy, but at least he’s eating his fruits and vegetables.

Our “farm box,” as Ernie calls it, arrived this afternoon. It also had salad greens (whisked away to the refrigerator a.s.a.p.), kiwis (given away to neighbor who LUVS kiwis and gets a smaller, kiwi-less box), and a paper bag I guessed what was in and hid for after dinner.

At the suggestion of our kiwi-loving neighbor, I made a spring vegetable couscous (or, as my mom often calls it, “coucou”–yes, she pronounces it like the iconic Swiss clock; no, I don’t know why). I used the big, Israeli style couscous (are you hearing “cuckoo” in your head when you read that like I am?) cooked in chicken broth, added shelled English peas, chopped snap peas, and the fava beans I garnered from the 14 pods in our box. We topped the whole thing with chopped spring onion tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and zest, and chopped cilantro. Very tasty. Needed… something. Perhaps that feta cheese the kiwi-lover suggested adding and I forgot about until just this moment? Yes! That’s it! Next time I’ll pay attention and write up amounts and times and other recipe-like details. (Or, feel free to experiment yourself and report back.)

That paper bag I squirreled away? Beautiful, luscious, brilliantly red strawberries. Have I already discussed my dislike of strawberries? Yeah. I don’t like ‘em. Not at all. Not even when they’re really good. These were beautiful, though. And they smelled a lot. I can only assume they would smell great to people who actually would like to ingest a strawberry. A fact borne out by Ernie’s avid consumption of all 10 strawberries. My dashing husband just let him go at it and forsook all claim to any berries. What a martyr.

Ernie doesn’t like to smile for pictures anymore. His new mode is either to run away when a camera appears or to stare glumly into the lens and look directly into your soul until you run away. I got this shot with maternal teasing. It wasn’t right, but it had to be done. Now the grandparents have something to show their friends when they look at the internets.

I made green garlic pesto a few weeks ago. A lot of green garlic pesto. So I froze a few servings of it. Last night I pulled one out of the freezer, tossed it with some spaghetti and pecorino cheese, tossed a green salad, and dinner was made. Ernie started off with his “plain noodles with cheese” but quickly asked where “the green stuff” was on his noodles. I told him he never likes sauce on his noodles, so I didn’t give him any.

“But Mama,” he said, “I like green stuff. Not sauce. Green stuff.”

Can I quote you on that, kid?

The strawberry-eating portion of the family also enjoyed a bit of fool–mashed strawberries folded into whipped cream–at the end of the meal. Reports were positive. Requests for seconds were made. Seriously, you just mash berries with a fork, add some sugar to taste (and to help pull out their juice), whip heavy cream to soft peaks, and fold the two together. You could add grand marnier or some other liqueur to fancify it, but you really don’t need to and people will beg you for the “recipe” such as it is. Plus, it’s real purty.