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Thais love strawberries. I find that surprising since any of the
strawberries I can find here, from nightmarkets to supermarkets,
are terrible. That the strawberries here are bland shouldn't be
surprising, since generally speaking Thailand is too hot to grow
delicious strawberries. For decades the Thais have tried growing
strawberries in the northern provinces of Chiang Mai and Chiang
Rai where production peaks in the winter months of January and
February. They first began importing strawberries from the U.S.
and then tried other varieties from China and Japan. When they
do have successful crops they face the addtional challenge of
getting them all the way to Bangkok in the heat without the
strawberries becoming too mushy and squashed. Of course, most
farmers just ship them too green, and although the berries will
eventually turn red, they will never taste like a freshly picked
strawberry ripe off of the vine. This problem is not
unique to Thailand, however, we have the same problem in the
U.S. (and not only with strawberries, but with most other fresh
fruits.) For those of you who have never picked a strawberry
ripe off of the vine, you have no idea just how delicious a
strawberry can really be. When I was a child my parents
had a garden that filled an entire lot. It was big enough to
build a house and garage on and still have room for a sizeable
yard both front and back. Along each outside edge of this garden
we grew a full length strawberry patch, approximately 100 feet
long by 10 feet wide. One was this year's crop which we were
currenlty picking, and the other was next year's crop which we
would pinch the blossoms off of so that multiple runners would
fill the patch in. When this year's crop was finished we would
spade it under, and before the arrival of winter we would cover
over next year's crop with straw. In the summer we had a lot of
strawberries to pick and my mom was busy cooking strawberry jam
and putting it up on shelves in the basement for winter. With
two freezers in the basement we also had plenty of room for the
boxes she filled with fresh strawberries so that she could
delight us with strawberry short cake any time of year. And we
didn't just bite into just any variety of strawberry, we
experimented and tried different varieties until we found one
that was extraordinarily delicious. To this day, so many decades
later, I can vividly recall and equisitely savour the
thousands of strawberrries that crumbled red and juicy all over
my tongue while still kneeling there in our strawberry patch. |
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