Once a year, Tipi Produce -- our CSA farmers -- organize a strawberry u-pick for its members. You get a row, you get some buckets and you get a set time when you can pick. Just this Friday they decided Sunday should be that day. The strawberries are at their best. I signed us up.
It is a glorious day. Stunning, really. Sunny, crisp, with a pronounced breeze. Not hot at all. It doesn't get much better than this! (For the first time, one of the Bresse hens takes a little stroll...)
(the phlox stands out)
We are up around 6 and get to work outside. Me -- not for long. I need to do some baking prep before we set out to pick our berries. And of course, we do pause for breakfast.
I decided to bake a strawberry tart for dinner. I used to make red fruit tarts all the time. I know the recipe for the shell, the creme patisserie, the red currant glaze by heart. But it's been a while, in part because the berries you get in the grocery store are too big and cutting them into slices just doesn't do it for me. You need market berries, or better yet, a u-pick with flavorful small berries -- at least this is my vision for a tart. (Too, making it is soooo labor intensive! Takes forever!)
I make the dough for the crust and let it rest in the fridge. And we're off!
Picking berries at Tipi's is fun. This year, they put down enough wheat straw on the rows that the weeds are largely suppressed. It really is easier to pick when you don't have to push aside thistle.
I warned Ed to pick only the very best, but he and I have different yardsticks for this and so of course, his bucket is fuller than mine.
We have a very productive hour out in the strawberry fields (forever!).
On the drive back (Tipi's farms are only about 25 minutes by car to the south of us), we pause at the nearest town of Evansville. Call it an exploration of small Wisconsin settlements: I'm looking for good places to bring visitors who want a taste of small town America.
Evansville is pretty.
So why is it so desolate? There is a cafe in town and Ed and I stop there for a treat...
We kind of think the pecan roll came straight from Costco's freezer section, and moreover, there is a sign in the window indicating that the cafe is ready to close doors for good. It's not a surprise. One person stopped for a drink while we were there. It's not the kind of traffic that will keep a cafe in business.
It always saddens me to see these Main Streets so forlorn and deserted. What would bring people -- local people, visitors, anyone! -- to these town centers? A dedicated cafe life, maybe a bakery where you absolutely must buy your daily bread -- these things work in France, but they're not part of our culture. Is there something else that would be a draw? For sure the stores with "antiques" and "nick racks" are not bringing in anyone, not in any stream of sustained traffic. And so eventually the eateries close and the shops go out of business and you have a Main Street that looks like it belonged to another era, offering nothing at all to those who pass this way right now.
At the farmhouse, I return to making the tart.
There, done!
And the young family comes for dinner.
(I take the kids to the new orchard: cherries! Sparrow is the rare kid who doesn't love cherries, but he's polite!)
This is what you look forward to all winter long: an evening with food on the porch.
(Sparrow asks if we ever go up on the porch roof. We do! Can he go up with us? Not today....)
(Sandpiper, before the tart...)
(Sandpiper, after...)
Hey, it may well be a whole year until I bake a strawberry tart again. The berry season is very short! So, enjoy this most awesome dessert developed by Paul Bugat, pastry chef at the infamous Parisian Patisserie Clichy, and brought to you today by the farmhouse staff of dedicated berry pickers and one ambitious pastry baker!
(others linger over the creme patisserie...)
Later, much later, I clean up, put my feet up, feel the night breeze, and savor this moment of summer calm.
With love...
