Berry Picking at Kuras Farms in West Suffield CT

It was a beautiful day on Sunday - sunny and warm, but with low humidity - and we decided sort of on the spur of the moment to go berry picking. We were hoping for raspberries, even though the season is just about over. As we drove through nearby Suffield, we lucked out: Kuras Farms on Mountain Road was advertising raspberries and blueberries, ready-to-go or pick-your-own. At many of the local farms and farm stands, the raspberry season has already ended. Last year's unusually warm winter gave perennials like berries an early start, and the recent hot and rainless weeks have not been kind to growers.

We pulled in the gravel driveway and stopped at the sales shed and were told that the blueberries were in full swing, and there were still some raspberries available in fields near the top of the hill behind the barns. Off we went, following the farm's dirt tote road on it's winding path to the berry fields.

Blueberry season is in full swing, and we passed row upon row of highbush blueberry plants heavy with fruit. But since we were totally focused on raspberries, we decided to return later in the week for blueberry picking.

The path turns steep as the road climbs the hill to the raspberry fields. I was grateful for the traction of our SUV though the roadway was well-packed and dry, so we never needed 4 wheel drive. The road does get rough in a couple places, though, so be careful if you come in a low-slung car - keep your speed low and watch for ruts carefully.

We parked on a level, grassy spot and started the short hike to the raspberry rows. On the way I noticed a single row of blackberries to the left, and headed over to gather a basket of them while Lynnafred and Maryanne went for the raspberries. It didn't take us long to fill three two-quart baskets with berries.

The view east across the Connecticut River Valley from the raspberry fields was breathtaking on such a clear day.

Driving the road to the fields is a delight to the eye, and the farm is truly a local treasure. There are meadows with wildflowers, ponds, and fields of crops.  Barn swallows flit along the grassy fields and dip into the ponds as they zip by. We felt somewhat honored that the farms owners choose to share their beautiful landscape with us by opening up the farm for pick-your-own enthusiasts, rather than just offer a roadside farmstand. The kids working the picking and sales shacks are friendly and helpful. Visiting here is just a wonderful experience.

Raspberry season is just about over, so if you plan to go you should do it very soon. It looks like the blueberries will be there for a little while yet. The Kurases also sell vegetables grown there. 

Kuras Farms LLC

1901 Mountain Road

West Suffield CT 06093

860.668.2942

PEE Jays?

Every year, Maryanne and I order a box of oranges from one of the local high schools during their annual fund raiser. This year, the fruit came from a fundraising place in New Jersey instead of directly from Florida:

That's a legit company, and the oranges are okay, and I'm sure the rest of the stuff they sell is okay too. But I still have to wonder what kind of horrible childhood someone has to have to get the nickname "Pee Jay" instead of, say, the more neutral "PJ."  Also I laugh, because I'm an immature bastard.

General Mills Simply Fruit snacks

The best surprise you could give Child Me was a packet of fruit snacks in my lunchbox. It was as close as you could get to giving me magic every lunch. Well, some things never change. I still love fruit snacks, but I'm a little more careful about them now. A lot of fruit snacks - while undeniably tasty - are also full of things that have nothing to do with fruit.

General Mills is changing that with their Simply Fruit line of fruit snacks.

The two varieties of Simply Fruit snacks that I've seen are Fruit Roll-Ups and Twists. The Fruit Roll-Ups are extremely reminiscent of the all natural fruit rolls that Dave used to get me when I was a kid. Child Me liked them more for their sticky, real-fruit taste instead of the plasticlike texture of regular brand name Fruit Roll-Ups, and these Simply Fruit ones are just like the offbrand organic ones he got me then, right down to the way they leave my hands sticky and a little gross feeling after I'm done eating them.

The Twists are a little easier to eat, because I can leave them in the wrapper as I nom them. These are also really good: full flavored and real tasting, almost overpoweringly fruity, and not at all sickeningly sweet.

The best part about these? They're the same price as their artificially flavored, plastic-y brethren. Each roll/twist is made of all natural ingredients with no bullshit or questionable qualities to them. Fruit juices and purees, fruit pectin, and natural flavor is all that goes into these babies, and it shows. The end result is a solid fruit snack that kids will like and grown ups can approve of. (And enjoy themselves if you're like me.)

Each roll has 50 calories; each twist has 60.

Cut It Yourself.

Price Chopper was in no mood to sell partial cantaloupes today.

Del Monte Fruit Naturals Blueberries

Del Monte has a new fruit snack - little cups of spoonable fruit packed in juice.  Lynnafred's tried a few of the available varieties:  Mixed berry, pineapple, peaches, blueberries.  For the most part, they've been decent or better.

Except for the blueberries.

I don't know how they managed to do it, but Del Monte has actually managed to make blueberries kind of nasty.  They're packed in a very delicious grape juice (which is kind of wierd in itself, why not just use blueberry juice?) but then you take a spoonful of the berries up to your mouth and find out that they taste like they're made of wax.

These are pissed-off blueberries.  They've been working out in the Blueberry Gym, becoming tough and mean.  They don't like being chewed, and they resist it.  They look like blueberries, and they smell like blueberries, and they have blueberry skins and a gut full of blueberry seeds, but they act like some badass bastard blueberry that hates your mouth.

Try them at your own risk - you've been warned.

New Banquet Fruit Pies

Did you know that ConAgra, harnessing their vast Small Pie Technology developed over years of producing edible pot pies, have introduced a new line of fruit pies?  I'd noticed them a few months ago in Dollar Tree (ha!  What does that tell you?) but only recently decided to try them as they've started hitting the regular supermarkets in my area.

So I bought one of each variety - Apple, Cherry-Berry, and Peach - and a couple of nights ago, I cooked them up for Maryanne, Lynnafred, and myself.  They cooked up just fine, with the expected amount of ugliness around the edges.  I'm not going to hold that against Banquet; frozen stuff cracks and breaks with the jostling of transit, and broken pie edges leak a little when they heat up.  Hell, my homemade pies leak a little most of the time.  Trouble is, leaking at the edges is the least of the faults here.

Look back up at the pictures on the box.  Notice how the little pie cuts are simply bursting with fruit.  I know that cover art is not necessarily representative of the actual product, but in this case the cover art has little to do with reality.  None of the pies had more than the smallest amount of actual fruit - a few pieces at most swimming in a vast pool of starch-thickened juice.  And this isn't just a subjective observation; the apple and peach pies both had "lemon juice" listed before the apples or peaches, and the cherry berry pie listed cherry juice and wheat flour listed before the fruit.

We tried the Cherry Berry Pie first.  There were some blueberries and a couple of shriveled cherries floating in the sea of purply-red goop.  The flavor was odd; I thought it had a vaguely chemical aftertaste - Lynn said it tasted the way an electrical fire smelled.  Maryanne simply wrinkled her nose at it and said, "Well that one isn't very good."

The Peach Pie had better flavor - more like a "real" peach pie but still much less like anything I would intentionally buy and serve.  A small number of small square peach cuts wallowed in large amounts of thick sloppy syrup  There was so little actual fruit in it that the pie, divided into three, didn't have enough to go around:  Lynnafred's portion had but a single tiny peach morsel.

The Apple Pie seemed to be Banquet's way of combining the worst aspects of the other two, bringing the resinous aftertaste of the Cherry Berry type together with the near-total lack of fruit in the Peach Pie.  Kind of a shame because there's a fairly decent apple-vanilla thing going on in there that could have been enjoyable if only there was some, you know, apple in it.

Stretching for something positve to say about them, I will mention that they do not contain HFCS.  Bravo, ConAgra, you get a point for that one.

Banquet's Fruit Pies sell for about a buck a piece no matter where they are found, whether it's ShopRite, Save-A-Lot, or Dollar Tree.  This is one of the very few times that I've actually felt ripped off buying something to review for the blog - at half price, you still wouldn't be getting your money's worth.

Bonus:  Dave Rants About Bloggers Who Kiss Ass

If you plug "Banquet Fruit Pie" into a Google search, you will find LOADS of positive reviews of these sparsely-fruited nasties.  Apparently, a "mommy blogger" webportal called "Mom Central" teamed up with Banquet to buy a shitload of positive word-of-mouth.  Banquet provided coupons and Mom Central paid the bloggers with gift cards, and in return it looks like all of the bloggers wrote glowing articles about the pies.  Each of the articles includes - sometimes in tiny print - the following mandated disclaimer:

So.  Because all these bloggers took coupons and a gift card for writing up the pies, none of them had the balls to stand up and say "Thanks for the coupons, Banquet, but these pies suck and that's what I'm going to write."  Don't these people have any pride (or integrity?)

It's situations like this that made me grateful for the FCC rules that require bloggers to disclose when their posts are sponsored.  That simple little rule might not keep douchebags honest, but it will at least help clue you in that a given blog might not be totally unbiased.

And yes, I do accept coupons from manufacturers and samples for review.  I've been upfront about that since the blog opened (before the FCC rules were put into effect.)  But, as it states in my policies, the companies that take advantage of that do so at their own risk, because my blog entries aren't for sale, and stuff that sucks is going to get called out no matter who paid to put it on my table.
.

The One Thing I Like About Summer.

Out of all the seasons, I dislike summer the most. I hate feeling hot and sticky, and that's the one thing that summer's really, really good at. During the summer, I spend more time than usual indoors, trying desperately to hide out from the hot heat outside. On the other hand, my favorite non-weather-related season happens during the summer: fresh fruit and veggie season. It turns me into some sort of "seasonal vegan"; I can happily eat nothing but fresh fruits and vegetables as long as things in the back yard are producing fruit and we can get other things from farmer's markets and local farmstands.

Fresh wild blueberries, golden cherries, small peaches, and fresh sliced cucumbers.

And lucky for me, Dave's garden is booming with fresh veggies. As long as summer's upon us, I'll be able to eat a lot of fresh foods that I really long for in the winter, when we can't grow anything at all. We also get to sourse things we can't or don't grow from local sources, like getting wild blueberries from Sussman's Blueberries in Granville, Massachusetts and fresh peaches from Johnny Appleseed's Orchard in Ellington, Connecticut. Like Dave, I prefer to get fruits and veggies fresh from local farmstands than to get them from the supermarket, where the quality is signifigantly less than a local farm or orchard, even if it costs me a little bit extra.

.

Tropicana vs. Florida's Natural

Tropicana Pure Premium:

• The cartons look the same size as ever, but if you check the label you'll find they now only contain 59 ounces.  Sneaky bastards - this is the equivalent of a 7.8% price increase per ounce.
• Tropicana buys oranges from Brazil
• Tropicana is a division of PepsiCo

Florida's Natural:

• Full 64-ounce carton
• 100% Florida-grown oranges
• Florida's Natural is a grower-owned and -operated co-op, and has been since it was founded in 1933.

Florida's Natural for the win.
.

Delicious New PomWonderful Juice Blends

POM Wonderful, the leading pomegranate juice company in the US, is introducing two new juice blends this month: POM Nectarine and POM Kiwi. Both are 100% juice, and both are delicious. I was fortunate to receive a sample of each to review.

The Pomegranate Kiwi is a unique blend - both fruits tend to have some sharpness to them, and the pomegranate both complimented the kiwi's citrusy character and accented its strawberryish character. The result was something totally new and unexpected, because the flavors merge so well that they don't really taste like pomegranate or kiwi so much as they taste fruity, tart, and excitingly different. My wife Maryanne likes it with breakfast; I think it would be aces in a cocktail with vodka or perhaps a white rum.

The Pomegranate Nectarine is marvelous. As soon as the bottle is opened, the perfumy sweetness of ripe, juicy nectarines greets the nose and that promise is easily fulfilled with the very first sip. All of the best aspects of nectarine juice step forward, enhanced and well-balanced with pomegranate's flavorful tartness. Could this be a new favorite, pushing out former champion Pomegranate Blueberry? Perhaps not, but we'll certainly have it side-by-side in the fridge.

Janny Chou, the POM Blogger, tells me that POM Kiwi and POM Nectarine will be in stores by the end of the month. I'm looking forward to it.

Links:

Learn about POM Wonderful's orchards and company here, at their About Us page.

Visit the POM Blog for recipes, news articles, pomegranate information, and more.

.

Foraging Suburbia: Sugar Plums

Forty years ago a shopping mall was built in my home town. It was anchored on one side by national discount retailer F W Woolworth's, and on the other side by local Connecticut department store Sage-Allen. Off to one side was a sparkling new free-standing First National supermarket. The architects designed a clean, modern-looking complex and planted the islands in the parking lot with beautiful flowering trees.

There have been a lot of changes at that mall over the past forty years. Woolworth's went out of business, and Sage-Allen followed. The supermarket building that once seemed so huge became tiny in comparison to the mega-supermarkets that have become today's trend, and First National abandoned it as they became Finast, then Edward's, and then sputtered into oblivion, absorbed by Dutch grocery giant Royal Ahold.

The mall saw some hard times. When most of the stores had finally closed, it was gutted and remodeled and turned into an open plaza with new tenants. The parking lots were repaved and repainted. New restaurants and buildings were added near the street and the new plaza thrived.

And through it all, the flowering trees prospered and grew. Their canopies spread over the freshly-striped parking spots. They budded and flowered in the spring, and the leaves fell and were removed in autumn, and the shoppers parked under them and brought out their parcels and went about their business, never really looking at the trees unless they were vying for a shady place to park in the heat of the summer.

Some of those trees are sugar plums. They're big, mature trees now and every summer around this time they're heavy with juicy little plums. So, every summer around this time, I park my truck under a couple of them and stand in the back so I can reach the fruit, usually picking six or seven pounds of sugar plums to munch or cook down into jam. People give me funny looks, but I don't care. The plums are "hiding in plain sight," so to speak, and they're only part of the bounty that's all around us if only we care to look.

Black raspberries should be ripening any time now. After that there'll be fat Concord grapes. And if I can get to them before the squirrels, I might be able to get a bushel of black walnuts soon. Stay tuned.

.

Job Lot Watermelons

I'm used to finding all sorts of foodstuffs at the job lot stores I haunt, but today was the first time I've ever seen watermelon.

Maraschino Cherries

Have you ever stopped to consider what a marvelous feat of culinary technology is sitting there, all red and shiny, in the pillow of whipped cream on top of your sundae?

It's true, you know. That ordinary ol' maraschino cherry is amazing. It starts out with a normal, natural cherry - but that's before the processing starts. The fruit is completely transformed: the color is removed, the natural flavor taken out - the very structure of the fruit itself is changed into a kind of candy. Then, flavors are added, a uniform color is reintroduced, and the magically-altered cherries are packed in jars of syrup. And all this is done without the stem even falling off! Wow, right?

As cool and awesome as this is, maraschino cherries just became cooler and more awesome. Because yesterday I found Roland BLUE MARASCHINO CHERRIES.

They're delicious. Bright, neon blue, bursting with blue razz flavor, and so thoroughly unnatural it might as well be manufactured at the Soylent Green factory.

Roland is making cherries in five non-traditional varieties: Lemon, Passion Fruit, Lime, Wild Berry, and Chocolate. I've only tried the Wild Berry ones...but I can't wait to try some of the others.

Silken Raspberry Mousse

My daughter Lynn enjoys cooking and trying new things. Not long ago, she found a recipe for a raspberry mousse on Nicole Weston's old blog bakingsheet and decided it would be a delicious late-summer dessert.

Lynn's recipe is a little different from Nicole's - she thought the flavors were a little weak in the original version (linked below) so she boosted a few of the quantities.

Lynn's Silken Raspberry Mousse

2½ cups fresh raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 ounces silken tofu

Reserve ¼ cup of the raspberries and set aside for garnish later.

In the bowl of a food processor, sprinkle sugar over remaining 2¼ cups of raspberries and pulse smooth, drizzling vanilla extract in as the mixture purees. When pureed, add the silken tofu and continue to pulse until smooth (about 5 minutes or so.)

Divide into individual serving dishes and refrigerate for two hours or more to let the mousse "set up." Garnish with reserved fresh raspberries and raspberry or mint leaves before serving.

Although not as light and airy as a traditional mousse (more like a pudding, actually) this smooth chilled dessert was light and refreshing - the perfect follow-up to grilled chicken and vegetables.

Links:
Silken Raspberry Mousse - the original recipe at bakingsheet.
Baking Bites - the sucessor blog to bakingsheet

Local Food: Sussmann's Wild Blueberries, Granville MA

In late July, a small sign goes up on Route 57 in Granville MA, right at the turn for North Lane. It's handpainted and it says "BLUEBERRIES" and for a few short weeks in the middle of summer it will guide you to the best-kept secret in Western Massachusetts: Sussmann's Farm.

For more than 20 years, my family and I have taken an annual drive to Sussmann's to buy delicious wild low-bush blueberries. Gathered on the farm and on other land in the area, the blueberries are sorted and packed for purchase at the Sussmann Berry Barn on North Lane.

The Berry Barn - about half a mile down North Lane on the right - is marked only by a light blue flag and a sign over the door, but it's hard to miss. The weathered barn with the rusty tin roof is typical of so many other old New England outbuildings; still sound and sturdy but with a bit of a tilt that gives the impression it's still standing almost from force of habit. Drive past the front door and you'll find a small gravel parking area just on the far side of the barn, right by a small vegetable garden.

Inside, the Berry Barn is open and airy. It gets hot and humid even on the hill here, but the open doors and windows and shade in the barn make it a little more tolerable inside. Flat wooden boxes of freshly-picked unsorted berries are stacked near the back by a large blue-painted machine filled with belts and pullies that drive a big leather conveyor belt. The berries are dumped on that belt and as they travel down to a catching area, workers pick through them to pull out stems, leaves, and unripe fruit. The berries then go into plastic-lined corrugate cartons which hold 25 pound lots of fruit. These cartons are either shipped as-is to wholesalers, or portioned out according to the preferences of folks who walk in looking to buy berries.

The best thing about buying fruit from the source like this is the freshness. We bought a gallon of berries on this trip, and they had been picked that very morning. The second best thing is, of course, the price. Our gallon of berries cost $25.00, or a little over $3.30 a pound, which is a fraction of the price supermarkets are charging. The 20-pound box at $50.00 is an even better deal. Wild blueberries freeze beautifully, so that would be the way to go for longer-term storage.

The wild blueberry season is short. Sussmann's opened for business this year on July 21st, and they expect to be all done by the third week of August (maybe a little longer if conditions are good.) It's always a good idea to call before making the drive.

Contact information:

Sussmann's Farm
North Lane
Granville, MA 01034
(413) 357-8898

Opening dates, hours, and current prices are available on their website - click here (opens in new tab).

Mixed Summer Fruit Jam

I have this love/hate relationship with canning.

On the one hand, I love it. I love making pickles, jams, jellies, and more all through the growing season - my wife and I start putting up jars of stuff with the very first rhubarb stalks in the spring, and we don't stop until the last of the tomatoes are harvested in October. I make double and triple batches of baked beans just to be able to can off eight or ten pints for days when we want beans but don't want to spend a day waiting for them. My canning kettle stays handy on the bottom shelf of my rollaway cart year-round so it's at my fingertips when needed, and my pressure canners are atop the fridge, ready at a moment's notice to put something by.

On the other hand, my kitchen isn't air-conditioned and we're in the midst of a mid-July heat wave. And yet, here I am, fruit cooking on the stove, the canning kettle boiling away, and the temperature in the kitchen coming up close to 90F even with fans in the window and it being 8:00 at night. There's nothing I can do about it; the fruit is ripe and has to be processed, and I can't let it stand around until the heat breaks. So I wait until after dark when it's a little cooler outside and sip iced tea as the preserves simmer, and retreat every now and then for short breaks in the haven of my air-conditioned living room.

---

One of the supermarkets in my town marks down produce as it starts to get less than perfect. I always check the markdown bin when I go there because I regularly get some great deals, especially on fruit destined for jellys, jams, or juicing. Cosmetic flaws, bruises, and overripe spots don't bother me that much when all I'm going to do is cut the stuff up into the kettle anyway.

And so, today I came home with some slightly underripe strawberries (high in pectin) and an assortment of nectarines, yellow peaches, white peaches, and limes, all for about 39 cents a pound.

Mixed Summer Fruit Jam

Strawberries
Peaches
Nectarines
1 lime
Sugar

Hull and slice strawberries; scald peaches and nectarines and then plunge into cool water to loosen their skins; skin and stone the fruit and cut into chunks. Prepare a total of 8 cups of fruit. Place cut fruit into a large heavy Dutch oven. Add the juice, pulp, and zest from the lime.

Bring to a simmer over medium low heat, then gradually stir in 6 generous cups of sugar. Continue cooking and stirring until sugar dissolves. Allow to cook, uncovered, over medium low heat, stirring occasionally. Simmering jam will foam up - keep an eye on it and stir down the foam if it looks like the pot will boil over.

Continue cooking until temperature reaches the jelly point, 220F. Test the jam by dropping a little bit onto a cold plate and chilling for a few minutes in the fridge; if the jam on the plate wrinkles when pushed with your finger, it's ready.

Turn off heat and allow the foam to settle. Skim off the foam with a spoon, then ladle the jam into jars, cap, and process in a boiling water bath 10 minutes to seal.

Makes about 9 half-pints.

Figs at Breakfast

Yesterday I picked up a big tray of plump, delicious fresh figs. I love them eaten just as they are, out of hand; when I was a kid, my uncle in Florida had a fig tree in his back yard and he'd always encourage us to pick and eat all the figs we wanted from that tree. Fresh figs still remind me of him and those summer visits.

Even so, I can't eat this whole package of figs by myself and my wife and daughter aren't so fond of fresh figs as I am. I thought about making that classic appetizer, grilled figs wrapped with prosciutto, only I haven't got any prosciutto in the house right now. But what's this? SCRAPPLE! How joyous!

I drizzled a bit of olive oil on a hot griddle and set a few halved figs, cut side down, on it to caramelize. While they cooked, slices of scrapple were sizzling nearby to crispy-outside-creamy-inside porky perfection. I served them up as a side to sunny-side-up eggs.

Now grilled figs wrapped in prosciutto is pretty wonderful, but grilled figs with scrapple is pretty damn good too. Fresh figs lose a lot of their "greeny" flavor when they're lightly browned, developing a rich and deep earthy sweetness that just seems perfectly at home with the sagey peppery porkiness of the scrapple. We will certainly do it again.

.

Cherry Jam

We're getting to the tail end of the California cherry season, and the stores here have been loaded with bags of delicious cherries. At least two of the blogs I read regularly - Fritter and Caviar and Codfish - have featured impromptu small-batch cherry jams.

Both recipes called for one pound of cherries, the juice and peel of one lime or lemon, a bit of almond extract, 2/3 cup of sugar, and half a cup of water as needed. Since I didn't have any limes on hand, I used a lemon.

The jam turned out pretty good. A pound of cherries only makes about 12 ounces of jam, which isn't enough for my needs (we give baskets of homemade jams, jellies, and pickles as holiday gifts) and although the lemon juice helps make the jam a little more tart and brightens the cherry flavor quite well, I'm less happy with the zest. Getting a bite of zest causes a tiny lemony burst which is okay, I guess, but not really what I'm after in a cherry jam.

I still have an eight-pound flat of strawberries in the fridge that needs attention tonight so cherries will have to wait, however. The produce store in town has been selling them at the gorgeous price of $1.99 a pound and if they still have some tomorrow I'll get six pounds and make enough jam for gifts as well as family eating.

Small Batch Cherry Jam

1 pound cherries, pitted and halved
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp almond extract
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup water if needed

Place cherries, lemon juice, and almond extract in a saucepan over medium heat and simmer just until cherries are soft, about 20 minutes. Stir in some water (up to 1/2 a cup) only if needed, then add sugar and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent scorching, until hot jam is thickened and bubbly.

Cherry jam sets up readily, so you need not bring the temperature to the full 220 F normally needed for jelly. When your stirring paddle comes out from the pan coated with a thick sheet of jelling liquid, test a few drops of jam on a chilled plate. If it's ready, it will set up on the plate after a moment of cooling; if not, cook a few minutes longer and test again.

Makes 12 ounces of jam - enough to fill three small 4-ounce jars.

Recipe adapted from Robin's at caviarandcodfish.com and Sarah's at fritterblog.blogspot.com.

Strawberry Season

Strawberry season starts slowly in New England. Sometime around the second week of June, signs start appearing by the roadsides. Mostly hand-painted, they announce that the fields are ready for picking. Some, like the one at right, spell it out and give the name of the farm you'll be visiting. Others are simpler: There might just be a big picture of a strawberry with an arrow pointing down the side road.

By the middle of the third week, the fields are filled with folks picking berries, and the farm stands have opened, offering pint- and quart-sized baskets of fruit already picked. Churches and civic groups start advertising their Strawberry Supper fundraisers, where for a few dollars one can get a decent meal finished off with delicious homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert. If you're lucky, it will be real shortcake biscuits under those berries, and not those nasty yellow spongecake cups that people from Away try to call "shortcake."

My favorite time to pick strawberries is the early morning. Many of the farms in the area open for picking around 7:00 am. The sun is new in the sky, there's usually a bit of fog in the fields, and the dew is still on the berry plants. A lot of people bend over the rows as they pick, but I prefer to put on old clothes and a pair of kneepads and crawl along the row at berry level, finding juicy red treasures hiding under the leaves as I creep along, pushing a shallow flat tray in front of me.

By nine in the morning, the fog has burned off and the sun is high enough in the sky to start baking the fields, but my wife, daughter, and I are ready to go home anyway, having picked about twenty pounds of berries. That sounds like a lot, but they go fast: we eat some out of hand, make shortcake (of course,) and strawberry-rhubarb pie; there are batches of strawberry preserves to put up, and we also freeze some for later use. (We freeze some small amounts of every berry that comes ripe in season so that at the end of the summer we can make a Mixed Berry Preserve as well.)

Unfortunately, strawberries here are a cool-weather crop and by the first couple weeks of July they're out of season again. I have some everbearing varieties in my garden that will supply us with a small amount through late August, but the big rush will be over and the pick-your-own places will be moving on to other fruits like raspberries, blueberries, and orchard fruits later towards September and October.

While it lasts, though, the berries are everywhere, as much part of our New England heritage as maple sugar in February, apples in September, and pumpkins in October.

---

"Shortcake" is a slightly sweetened biscuit, baked up on the dry side so it can drink up plenty of strawberry juice when it's topped with berries and whipped cream. If you've only had "strawberry shortcake" on those horrid yellow spongecake cups that taste like they've been carved out of a Hostess Twinkie, do yourself an enormous favor and try my grandmother's recipe for real shortcake:

SHORTCAKE

2 cup flour
4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
5 tablespoon butter
2/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 425

Butter and lightly flour an 8-inch cake pan or a cookie sheet.

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter in bits and work it into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Slowly stir in the milk, using just enough to hold the dough together. Turn out onto a floured board and knead for a minute or two. Put the dough into the cake pan, or roll or pat it 3/4 inch thick and cut it into eight 2-inch rounds, using a biscuit cutter. Arrange the rounds on a cookie sheet and bake them for 10 - 12 minutes (or bake the larger cake for 12 - 15 minutes.) Split with two forks while still warm. Spread with butter if you like, fill with sugared berries, and serve warm with heavy cream or whipped cream.

.

Horned Melon: The Triple Dog Dare Challenge!

Toontz, in her blog Okara Mountain, recently wrote about her tendency to breeze on past certain items when she's grocery shopping:

I lamented to my husband that there are so many items in the grocery store that I just pass by, without even giving them a second thought, just because I have never eaten them before. Or had a bad experience with growing up. My mother, when she fried eggplant, would laugh at me because the smell would literally run me out of the house. I hate brussels sprouts, though my sister raves about them. My little darlings have never eaten a turnip, just because I have never picked one up at the grocery.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I think all of us do that to some degree. But toontz decided she wants to start pushing out of her comfort zone, and she's invited us along for the ride. Welcome to the Triple Dog Dare Challenge, a monthly event in which participants try out something new and different in a defined food category - it need not be exotic, rare, or expensive, only something one has never tried before. This month's category is Fruit.

This one was something of a stumper for me because I actively seek out strange and unusual foods. I'm familiar with most of the items on internet-based "strange fruit" lists, and most of the supermarkets in my area don't have a very large selection of exotic produce from which to choose.

How fortunate, then, for me to find horned melons at one of the local markets. Also known as kiwanos, melanos, jelly melons, hedged gourds, and "English tomatoes" (really?) horned melons are a bright yellowy-orange when ripe and covered with sharp spikes like a miniature durian.

There it is, in all its lethally spiked cheery orange glory. About six inches or so from end to end, relatively heavy for its size, and covered with leathery skin studded with sharp spines, it looks more like a dog's chew toy than a fruit. (My dog thought so, too, whining and begging for it until I let him take a sniff of it and he bumped his nose on one of the spines.) I inspected the melon carefully, looking for a way in, but there were no obvious entry points, seams, or bits that looked peelable, so it was off to the cutting board.

I cut a long wedge from the melon, end to end. Holy crap, it's green inside!! And filled with seeds that look remarkably like those from a cucumber. Except that cucumber seeds aren't individually surrounded by ectoplasmic blobs, which is what seemed to be the case within this alien-looking melon.

I gave the wedge a tentative squeeze and the little seed blobs popped out from pore-like pockets along the skin of the fruit. It looked, quite frankly, disgusting. But what the hell - I've put worse-looking things in my mouth, so I sucked up a mouthful of the blobs and kind of rolled them around my tongue.

I wasn't sure I could eat the seeds or not, so I kind of pushed the seeds out through my teeth while retaining the blobby fruit part in my mouth. I spit the seeds out and chewed away at the pulp. It's rather resistant to tooth damage, but chewing does release some juice and flavor, and I guess the point is to extract as much of the flavor of the melon as possible before finally swallowing the pulp and going for another mouthful of ectoplasm.

I can't say the flavor was anything very exciting. It was sort of cucumbersome, with a tart green kiwifruit overtone, but I also noted a rather subtle and unpleasant fishiness. This, combined with the slimy frog's-egg texture, made for an experience which I don't regret but won't repeat.

For every cloud there is a silver lining, however, and in this case the silver lining is Sid, our Amazon parrot. He thoroughly enjoyed a slice of horned melon, carefully removing each gooey seed pod and eating first the seed (his favorite part) and then the bright green pulp. When he had completely removed all of the seeds, he proceeded to eat all of the pulpy membrane inside the skin, then flipped the skin over and ate all of the spines from the exterior. By the time he was done, there was naught but a thin rubbery layer of bright orange exterior skin with lots of beakmarks along the edges. I may never buy another horned melon for myself, but I might pick one up for an occasional treat for Sid.

.

Strawberries!

Three weeks ago, I started my garden with a fifteen-foot row of strawberry plants. Despite the cool weather, we've had a good balance of sunshine and rain, and the plants have done very well.

Today, the first strawberry flowers appeared!

Even though it's a brand-new strawberry bed and we probably won't get more than a single recipe's worth of shortcake from it this year, I'm still excited.