Strawberry Sidecars with Fresh Strawberry Jam and Lime Sugar
Sunday, June 19, 2011 at 10:00PM ;)
Last year, when we picked strawberries with the kids, it felt like we had placed ourselves on the banks of a Dantesque river leading to a green and red hell (4th Level with Plutus, the wolf-like demon, which maybe was just the ugly donkey the strawberry farm keeps in a pen).
We drove out to our local u-pick farm (local being defined as a 45-minute drive), bought a flat to carry our hoped-for bounty, passing by tables of bright red jewels that seemed to be screaming silently at me, “Abandon all hope. Don’t go into the fields! Also, you forgot your diaper bag, you fool.”
Any excursion into the world outside of our backyard fence last year could be complicated, especially one to the side of a hill, far from bathrooms and the forgotten diaper bag in the van. It’s not that any one thing went wrong, it was that life had handed us more than we thought we could carry. Literally.
Too far from snack time and not close enough to lunch, we walked down a dusty road toward the fields, two wobbly twin girls and their older brother, riding on flatbed wagons that Karen and I pulled.
