A Blush Pink and Strawberry Red Love Affair
Growing up, I was surrounded by strawberries, lots of em! They were everywhere, literally, due to my mother quite innocently mentioning how much she liked them. Her simple preference turned out to be the birthplace of an accidental “collection.” EVERYone for seemingly EVERY occasion began to shower strawberry motif gifts on my mother for EVERY single gift giving occasion. It created something of an unexpected, ecclectic strawberry vineyard in our very own home. I, too, was guilty of seeking out and securing every strawberry knick nack imaginable to honor her with, just waiting with anticipation for the next opportune moment to surprise her with another strawberry delight!
There’s a Strawberry on my Back
I grew up wanting to work in the fields, a dream my parents deferred my entire childhood.
Every elementary kid did it, or so it seemed. Each summer a chartered school bus would haul sleepy-eyed kids from their homes to the sprawling strawberry fields just a short 15-minute drive into the county. While I lazed around watching “Tom and Jerry” and lapping up “toasted rice” cereal, I imagined my schoolmates singing songs and forging friendships in my absence.
strawberry sauce
We all know the pleasures of eating strawberries and some extol their aphrodisiacal properties, but none so well as Madame Tallien. Born to the aristocracy, given six names, and raised by nuns, this strawberry lover survived a march to the guillotine, bearing the fruit (ten) of multiple lovers and husbands (including the notoriously seedy and filthy Napoleon Bonaparte), several stints in prison and all of the great political and social shifts of the late 1700s. A style maven and risk-taker throughout her life, she insisted on bathing solely in the cure-all juice of strawberries.
Inspired by Strawberries
Succulent, sensual and a showy shade of red peeking through a garden of green. The heady aroma of a woven basket filled with those from a pick-your-own roadside farm. Our muse this week is a fresh strawberry.
