Strawberry fields forever

I can't believe I just bought another kilo of strawberries, but it's end of season now and finally they are affordable.

Earlier in the week we went strawberry picking at a local farm and came home with 5.5 kilos worth. Should have lasted a few days right? We polished them off for dinner that night, nothing else needed, just a side of creamy water buffalo yoghurt. Some of the best strawberries ever.

We hadn't planned on strawberry picking but a spring heatwave was rolling in (yuck) and a local farmer was worried that his ripe crop would go bad on the bushes before it could all be harvested, so for a small token fee the general public was invited to bring baskets and buckets and to come pick as much of the ripe fruit as they wanted. For the price of a 500g punnet of strawberries in the shops we picked several kilos worth. It was a great deal and so much fun.

Some of the strawberries were already starting to become overripe. They looked gorgeous hanging on the plant but if you touched them they disintegrated in to a red gooey mess. We come out of there looking like we'd done a murder, stained head to toe in red juice. There was plenty of perfectly ripe fruit though, and I mean perfect, as in peak sweetness and flavour, needing to be consumed on the day they were picked.

What we didn't eat on the day I turned in to my grandmother's strawberry tzimmes, essentially a simple cold fruit soup, just cook the berries with water and a dash of cinnamon and vanilla, then chill and serve in the heat of the day either from the fridge with a dollop of sour cream or yoghurt or semi-frozen from the freezer as a slush in a big beer glass. A little slice of heaven.

Strawberry fields forever.