Ingredient Fri Jun 12 2009

Strawberries

Eleven months out of the year, eating a strawberry most likely means eating a berry grown in California. Those berries are raised not just for flavor, but also for appearance and durability -- their ability to survive a cross-country trip to the supermarket and still look good.

Now, our short local strawberry season is here. Local strawberries usually arrive at the beginning of June. By the end of the month, they're on their way out.

This is shaping up to be a pretty good year for strawberry flavor, so local, peak-season berries probably won't need much help. But if you're looking for something more, here are three quick strawberry serving ideas:

Turn them into strawberry cheesecake bites. Take a strawberry, spread a bit of cream cheese onto it and dip in graham cracker crumbs. Consume.

For a salad, toss sliced strawberries into spinach. A balsamic vinaigrette goes well with this. (That's 1 part vinegar to 3 or 4 parts olive oil.) Consider adding some poppy seeds and briefly sauteed minced onions to the vinaigrette.

Finally, for a dead-simple serving idea, you can't beat berries with sour cream and brown sugar.

Daniel Shumski works for an orchard and writes Fruit Slinger, a blog about the farm and farmers markets. You can also follow him on Twitter.

— Daniel Shumski / Comments (0)