Strawberries

Let's talk strawberries for a moment, shall we?

I'm rather smitten with berries of all sorts lately, but most especially strawberries.

I'm not the only one in the house who's smitten. In fact, given the choice, Little Man would eat only berries all day every day. I'm quite sure of it. Can't say I blame the kid.

So we've been eating a lot of berries, not only strawberries but also blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Yet the strawberries have taken a particularly important place in our diet lately.

Mostly, we've been nibbling on the strawberries picked from our front-yard patch. Or buying strawberries from the grocery store.

But this past Saturday at the farmer's market, there were plenty of local strawberries for sale, so I brought some home. And promptly set to eating them plain, making strawberry and cream biscuits (more on those later), and whipping up buckwheat pancakes with roasted strawberries (more on that coming, too).

I had a few store-bought strawberries lingering in the fridge when I brought home the fresh local ones, so I cut the last of those up too. Here's a bowl with a few of each. Bet you'll never guess which is which.

Can you believe the difference? The store-bought berries, probably shipped from California and sitting in the store for close to a week before I bought them, are on the left. They're firm, almost a bit dry, mostly white on the inside. The ones on the right are the fresh local berries. They're a bit soft, incredibly juicy, and bright red all the way through.

Bet you'll never guess which ones taste better, either.

And this is why, whenever I can, I try to buy local. Because whether it's just-picked strawberries or fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes, it doesn't get any better than something grown right here near home.