We're All Ears :: June Reveal

The strawberry. A delicious taste of summer.

[Photo credit :: Benil Benjamin :: Unsplash]

I have memories of my mother taking us out the the U-Pick strawberry fields nearby our hometown very early on a June morning. Once I had kids of my own I made sure that we did this trek a few times as well. I remember that they would give us shallow cardboard boxes and drive us by tractor out to a distant row mounded over with lush green plants. Each row would have multiple pickers all hunched over with big floppy hats eagerly gripping the bright red berries. As a kid it was a feast! More berries went in my belly than in my flat! At the end of your row, you got to take your flats to the farm to be weighed. Then it was home to wash and process all the juicy goodness, usually into canned preserves. 

And then there were the treats. Fresh berries piled on pancakes, overflowing over ice cream and floating in my cereal. And the desserts... pies and strawberry shortcake, or mixed with rhubarb from grandma's garden in a fluffy trifle. Yum!

I still haven't had my first strawberry shortcake of the season, but I did see that they are advertising it! Yea! So when I get home on Sunday night from the second of my trips this month, I think I know where I will be celebrating!

Since I haven't had any fresh strawberries...yet...I thought that I would make some of my own in anticipation. I found these wonderful headpins in my stash...I am quite certain that I got them last year at the Bead & Button show, but for the life of me, I cannot remember who they belong to. I thought that they looked very much like strawberries, but even more so once I added the little hand-painted bead caps. I call these "Fragaria" for the genus of the species that is more commonly known as the garden strawberry.

And I really liked the tiny little green berries in this picture, so I made those as well, aptly named, "Unripe."

Perfect adornment for berry-picking days!

I found a web page that had 14 facts about strawberries that I thought were really interesting. How many of these were new to you?

1. Strawberries are the only fruit that wear their seeds on the outside. The average berry is adorned with some 200 of them. No wonder it only takes one bite to get seeds stuck in your teeth.
2. Strawberries aren’t true berries, like blueberries or even grapes. Technically, a berry has its seeds on the inside. And, to be über technical, each seed on a strawberry is considered by botanists to be its own separate fruit. Whoa, meta!
3. Strawberries are members of the rose family. Should you come upon a bush of them growing, you’ll see: they smell as sweet as they taste.
4. The strawberry plant is a perennial. This means if you plant one now, it will come back next year and the following and the year after that. It may not bear fruit immediately, but once it does, it will remain productive for about five years.
5. Americans eat an average of three-and-a-half pounds of fresh strawberries each per year. It’s closer to five pounds if you count frozen ones. In a study, more than half of nine-year-olds picked strawberries as their favorite fruit. They’re nature’s candy!
6. Belgium has a museum dedicated to strawberries. In the gift shop at Le Musée de la Fraise (The Strawberry Museum), you can buy everything from strawberry jam to strawberry beer.
7. Native Americans ate strawberries long before European settlers arrived. As spring’s first fruit, they were a treat, eaten freshly picked or baked into cornbread.
8. The ancient Romans thought strawberries had medicinal powers. They used them to treat everything from depression to fainting to fever, kidney stones, bad breath and sore throats.
9. Sex & Strawberries? In France, where they’re believed to be an aphrodisiac, strawberries are served to newlyweds at traditional wedding breakfasts in the form of a creamy sweet soup.
10. Strawberries are believed to help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. They are low in calories and high in vitamins C, B6, K, fiber, folic acid, potassium and amino acids.
11. Strawberries contain high levels of nitrate. This has been shown to increase blood and oxygen flow to the muscles. Research suggests that people who load up on strawberries before exercising have greater endurance and burn more calories.
12. California produces some 80% of the strawberries in the U.S. They grow about 2 billion pounds of the heart-shaped fruits per year. Every state in the U.S. and every province in Canada grows their own.
13. To store fresh strawberries, wash them and cut the stem away. However, if you plan to keep them in the fridge for a few days, wait until before you eat them to clean them. Rinsing them speeds up spoiling.
14. Strawberries can also be pickled. Especially when picked green or unripe. If your berries are overripe, make jam!

Now it is your turn! Show off your best berry baubles!

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We're All Ears :: June Inspiration

We have a local ice cream place that is only open from March-October called Belt's Soft Serve. It is a well-documented tradition that people line up overnight in March, braving the frigid temperatures by camping out in the parking lot to be one of the first customers when they open. And the last night they are open has crowds stretching around the block for hours. It is THE place to be seen in town, and is pretty tasty, too!

[Photo credit :: Christian Widell :: Unsplash]

They have cones that are like 3 feet tall and all sorts of yummies including their own home-made peanut butter cups, brownies and cookie dough for flurries. They also use a lot of local produce throughout the season, and that is awesome.

[Photo credit :: veeterzy :: Unsplash]

I do not go there often, so when I do it has to be special. I wait all year for the small window of opportunity to get a home-made strawberry shortcake sundae. A home-baked shortbread cake riding a mound of creamy soft-serve vanilla ice cream drizzled with heaps of local strawberries (always splurge for extra!) and topped with whipped cream. That is summer in a bowl for me!

[Photo credit :: Danielle MacInnes :: Unsplash]

So this month, in anticipation of this limited-time treat (only available for the last half of June! In between my travels this month you can bet I will be there more than once!), I thought that we could use strawberries as our theme this month.

[Photo credit :: Benil Benjamin :: Unsplash]

Have you ever heard of the website Unsplash? I discovered it this spring and it is chock-full of photography that is FREE to use. That's right. FREE. All of these images are from Unsplash.

You are actually encouraged to use them on your website, remix them into an art piece, post them to your blog. I find the collections especially endearing. And the pictures themselves are outstanding in their subject matter, composition, lighting. They seem like mysterious artifacts that need to have a story told about them. 

See you on June 17th for the sweet and juicy reveal!