Strawberry-Flavored Dreams

Sometimes I look out at the garden and I despair. There is so much to weed. There is so much to plant. There’s so much to think about with companion planting, crop rotation, nutrition for the plants, pest control – and I do it all organically. I wonder why in the world I embarked on this mini self-sustainable journey. Then the other day happens.

I stood at the kitchen window. Through the window I could see my tree with its fragrant blooms that attract so many beneficial insects. I gazed over my frog collection and the very special gnome that I’ve had for years. I felt at peace. Calm. Down in the sink was my strawberry station.

I’d had a problem earlier that day when I’d brought in the tupperware container full of strawberries. I could barely see at that part of the kitchen. The light was streaming in the window, but the tree blocks most of the intensity. I had a brainstorm-lightbulb moment when I remembered that I’m a keeper of reptiles. Reptile owners seem to accumulate various spotlight-like heating or lighting lamps. I even have the energy efficient CFLs in some of them. I strung one up on a hook that was already there behind the scalloped-edge trim solidly placed between the two sets of cabinets. It hung. It turned on. It worked. Brilliant.

To the left I placed the dirt-crusted, insect-touched strawberries. We’d already eaten a few several days earlier (after they’d been washed, of course). They were warm, juicy, ripe, and full of bursts of alternating mellow and sharp flavors. In the center I placed a bowl to catch the greenery and fibrous stem. To the right was a bowl of lukewarm water.

My process was the following: Grab a strawberry, squeamishly hope I didn’t touch something icky (I don’t like touching bugs or bug-eaten parts), dunk it in the water a few times and gently rub at it to get the dirt off, check for any bug-eaten spots, hull it (remove the greenery and stem), make sure it is clean, place it on the cookie sheet to be frozen. The process worked.

When I cleaned up, I placed the leftover strawberry pieces into the bowl of lukewarm water and tipped the whole thing into the compost bin. I slid the strawberries on the pan into our chest freezer. Later, I would slid them into a Bell jar, frozen, put a lid on the jar and leave it in the freezer, too. Fresh frozen strawberries. From my garden.

It took me less than a half an hour to harvest the strawberries, hull them, and freeze them. It was a half an hour out of space, out of time. In my own world. Beneficial insects buzzing around the blossoms outside, warm and juicy strawberries fresh in my mind, a hope for strawberry jam or smoothies in the dead of winter. When I take a bite of those strawberries and marvel in their flavor in six months… with three feet of snow on the ground… I hope I hold on to this moment, revel in it, and hug it tightly.

And I remembered. This is just one of many reasons why I started this mini self-sustainable journey.