Page 22 - Sonoma County Gazette June 2019

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By Peter Posert
The most beautiful smile in the world has been debated for centuries. Could the most beautiful smile be the smile of desire? The smile of contentment?
The smile of victory? The smile of a muse has inspired men for centuries and one of the world’s most famous smiles, The Mona Lisa smile, will forever be a beguiling curiosity. But all these smiles pale in comparison the best smile of all. The one smile that rules all others.
That smile is ... the Sonoma County Strawberry Patch Smile!
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A perfectly ripe, perfectly delicious, perfectly red, perfectly tasty, fun strawberry at the local patch is a glimmering shimmering delight to behold. Just imagine your loved one looking over at you after eating the best ripe strawberry on the planet—and they are here, right now, just down the street!
Is there a better seasonal, local, fresh, healthy, and delicious restaurant than your local strawberry patch? I don’t think so. These restaurants pop up and delight us
for just a few months a year, starting May and rising to their full height in June. You can go down and get a great meal, a box of strawberries, for just a few dollars and have a sublime restaurant experience. The best
part of the meal is... the priceless happy smile of your loved one – if you share your strawberries that is.
Going strawberry patch tasting instead of wine tasting is one way to experience the quality of our local farming economy.
You can discuss the alluvial or sedimentary loam or schist soil under
the strawberries just like with the microclimates of wine. You can discuss
the grafted root stock or the clones of the berries. You can ponder which French oak aging barrel would be better with your homemade strawberry jam: Limousin, Vosge or Nevers (I’d go with the Nevers myself!). Or you can just eat your delicious strawberries and not worry about all that wine stuff for a day.
Some folks I know bring along a little water to rinse their berries and eat them
on the spot, but other folks I know just
eat them on the spot anyway. Most of our farms are organic and don’t spray anything harmful, they know what’s going on.
The second-best part of getting down to
the strawberry patches, besides munching
them on the spot, is the take home box and what you do with the berries when you get home! I ALWAYS get an extra couple of boxes and make homemade strawberry ice cream – always! (Recipe below). Making a couple of jars of strawberry jam in June for later in the year is not the worst thing you can do for an hour or two in late spring, because I know, spreading that homemade strawberry jam on a homemade biscuit or scone in the middle of winter on a rainy morning is a thing of beauty.
Wenn of Wenn’s Strawberry Patch
22 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 6/19
STRAWBERRIES cont’d on page 23