Wednesday, 01 July 2009 at 02:20 PM "I'll let you have the final word on that."
"What are we going to do with all these raspberries?" Peter surveyed the table — so many unsold baskets on yet another gray, rainy market day.
"Well, I can pay you for some of them," I offered.
What was this new thing I had with paying for fruit? I had already bought another $10 worth of strawberries off another stand today.
This was becoming a bad habit.
Peter looked at me. "I think we're beyond where you need to pay for fruit."
He caught me a little off guard. "Well, I just meant it's a lot of berries and ..."
"We are beyond you paying me for fruit," he said, matter-of-factly.
"I'll let you have the final word on that, Peter."
I took home three quarts of strawberries, two pints of blueberries, two pints of raspberries and two pints of cherries. I try to be conscientious when I take fruit — if something's left over or abundant, that's one thing. If my taking it deprives the farm of a revenue opportunity, that's another.
Today, I deprived the farm of a few small revenue opportunities.
Oh, maybe yesterday, too: I took home three baskets of fraises des bois.
But Peter told me to take those home. In fact, it was the first thing he said to me Saturday morning, when we threw open the back of the truck and found the flats of wild strawberries stacked on the edge.
"Don't you think you should take some of these home and make jam out of them?"
Yes, Peter. In fact, I do think that.
Yes, I do.
markets
Reader Comments (4)
The Boss is always right. Especially when it comes to wonderful berries :)
You bastard. I saw fraises du bois at the Evanston Farmer's Market and your post inspired me to try some. Ate a few, tossed the rest in a pot, sloshed in some red wine and sugar (I didn't have any balsamic vinegar around) - and wound up with the most incredible explosively strawberry jam I've ever tasted (well, only about 1/3 cup of it, but still) But at $7 for not even 4 oz, I don't know that I can justify making more, damn it!
Thanks for the inspiration, anyway....
You know, for what it's worth, I made a batch of jam out of fraises des bois. (Well, "batch" might be overstating the case; it amounted to one half-pint jar.)
It was good, but I've come to believe that they might work better as a supporting flavor in other jams. Next year, I'll almost certainly throw some in my strawberry jam. And I'm thinking of using some in my raspberry jam.
I like your red wine jam idea. It reminds me: They'd be nice sitting at the bottom of a champagne glass, too.
Hmm...maybe it was the wine; I'll have to try wine with next year's regular strawberries (I also did strawberry-rhubarb, strawberry-mint and strawberry-tangerine help use up the 6 quarts we got at the U-pick place) The texture was terrific, though - much better than the "regular" strawberries, needed no doctoring to become jammy...