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| Fresh from Baumhart Berry Farm |
I missed it last year, so I've been keeping a close eye on the roadside stands in the Vermilion area. The farms where you pick them yourself have been open for a week or two, but I've been having trouble finding a stand where you could just stop and buy a pint. Fortunately, while Baumhart Berry Farm is a U-Pick farm, they also have some that you can just buy. (They put a special sign out by the road to let you know when they have some.) So I made my second stop of the season there last night and the dee-lishus photo above is the result.
Freshly-picked strawberries taste so much better than their grocery store counterparts (which are harder, flavorless and have a white core – ugh). Plus some of the squashed strawberries at the bottom of the container are often quite hair-raising.
So what do you do with strawberries? Besides just eating them and putting them on my cereal, I took a hint from the ad below, which ran in the Lorain Journal on June 3, 1954 and had some strawberry shortcake.
We always had them with the store-bought sponge-cake cups and whatever spray whip was the cheapest. Dad had a failing for Cool Whip, but mum didn't like it because it "tasted like metal" (something I agree with).
ReplyDeleteMu favorite part was at the very end of the dessert, when the cake, juice, and cream would be all mixed together in a wonderful strawberry slurry.
My mom would stop at a stand just north of Oberlin on the east side of 58, and buy wonderful fruits and vegetables, including the best strawberries ever. She'd pluck the stems, slice them into her big glass bowl, sprinkle some sugar on them, and let them sit in the fridge for what seemed like FOREVER until they were swimming in a fantastic tartly sweet syrup, then dolloped over sponge cake rounds, crowned with whipped cream, and served as Sunday dessert.
ReplyDeleteYou're quite right, Dan... the ones in the supermarket pale in comparison.
KEL FLIGNER
ReplyDelete1940 - 2024.
I quit eating strawberries when I saw that video where a strawberry was soaked in salt water and then a tiny little worm slithered out of it.I used to like strawberries but I don't like them good enough to eat a strawberry worm.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Brownhelm, and for a few years, the farmer up the road (Mr. Hite) grew strawberries. He had pick your own or baskets at his stand. He had me and my neighbor pick them for him to sell at the stand. I think we ate more than we brought back. We'd be stained red when we came in from the fields. He was a good sport about it, just laughing when we came back in and saying he was going to weigh us going out and coming back to see how much he would dock our pay.
ReplyDeleteWhile in high school, I used to work at Penton's during berry picking season. I would ride my bike in the early morning from Loretta Court to Penton's. It was a grand time indeed!! When we were done for the day, we would go to the "cold room" for fresh apple cider!! Ahhhhh...
ReplyDeleteJeff Rash
Hi Jeff, that's a really nice reminisce.
ReplyDeleteThat kid has a fairly severe tongue-control problem.
ReplyDeleteProbably a percussionist 'cause he'd make a lousy horn player.