Celebrate strawberries!
For many adults, an early morning infusion of caffeine to the brain is essential for encouraging that organ to slip out of neutral and into some forward gear. For some, the process of obtaining that rich, aromatic boost needs to be quite simple in order to be mastered when still in the throes of gun-slit eyes and sleep-befogged intelligence or manipulative skills. Manufacturers of small appliances sympathize and respond.
While you are waiting, cup in hand, that few minutes between pushing the “On” button and retrieving liquid enthusiasm for your day, look around your kitchen at the number of changes that have occurred in the past century to our food-producing experiences. Toast, for example, no longer requires skewering bread on a long, metal fork and hunkering over the hearth in pursuit of a browned, but not blackened, product. Indeed, the cheerful “Bing!” that announces breakfast these days might very well be the serving up of an entire microwavable meal.
Foraging in a freezer is a much different experience from examining the contents of rows and rows of mason jars, the product of home canning in a hellish summer kitchen. Even that was an improvement over foraging for tired, wrinkled, almost-bad root crops that survived (barely) until spring in the cellar. Foraging at the drive-thru window of a fast food restaurant seems easier still.
However, while our minds have definitely wrapped themselves around the concept of near-instant gratification where food is concerned, our bodies’ functions are directed by DNA, unaltered by the “blink of an eye” that represents our modern food industry. It is the craving for fresh, wholesome, vitamin-rich (rather than chemically enriched) food that sends us out into the grass in the early spring for the first dandelions to pop up their dark leaves or into marshy underbrush alongside a river to harvest fiddleheads.
Our taste buds agree with our cravings that fresh is better and unaltered can be an astounding sensation for our tongues and an elixir of health for our bodies. How appropriate that the Presque Isle Farmers Market, convening every Saturday morning in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot between May and October, prepares to celebrate the arrival of fresh fruit grown in The County, beginning with strawberries, now ripe and abundant.
On Saturday, July 14th between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., we are having a Strawberry Festival with fresh berries, of course, and early greens, meat, dairy, eggs, flowers, jams and preserves, and the other “usual stuff.” We also invited local crafters to share their talents. You will find pottery, wooden crafts, soap, and hand-made items for sale. We have local musical talent to entertain the crowd and, with luck, some young people (of all ages) and a chicken or two to dance to the fiddle, so to speak.
Please plan to join our celebration and soothe those cravings for food and fun.
Editor’s note: This weekly column is written by members of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. For more information or to join, contact their secretary/treasurer Steve Miller of Westmanland at 896-5860 or via e-mail at beetree@xpressamerica.net. The group’s website is https://sites.google.com/site/presqueislefarmersmarket/
