It was worth it. It was worth getting up on a morning where I just wanted to stay in bed, going to work, fighting the crowds, doing my nonsensical box-factory dance, going outside in a rainstorm that did nothing to relieve the humidity. If I hadn’t got out of bed, I never would have gone to the farmer’s market to pick up my eggs; nor would I have wondered if there was any rhubarb left; nor would I have discovered that the ladies who sell me my asparagus had the first strawberries of the season. Had I not had an appointment with my mental health professional tonight, and had I not weighed myself down with two dozen eggs, I would have gone to town at the market. We would have a fridge full of arugula and upland cress and mustard greens and chard (red and green) and kale and mixed lettuces and zucchini blossoms and Thai holy basil.
As it is, I have three pounds of rhubarb and two quarts of strawberries—although now I have just under two quarts, thanks to some necessary prodigious quality control on my part ("well, that one’s getting soft and bruisy; if I leave it there, it will rot, and then the rest of the basket will rot, and we can’t have that!"). Now I have questions, the kind of questions that help me drift into sweet sleep: what am I going to do with this fruit? Do I get an early start on my annual Festival of Jams, Jellies and Preserves and make jam? Do I make my favorite dessert from childhood, the recipe of my sainted Swedish great-grandmother for a dish that probably should be called compote, but which she always called, simply, Rhubarb and Strawberries? Do I save the strawberries for strawberry shortcake, particularly the tarragon-flecked variety created by Claudia Fleming? Do I macerate them in sugar, crush them in their syrup and add them to whipped cream for strawberry fool? Do we have any meringues to crumble into that strawberry fool? What about the rhubarb? Should I make plain rhubarb jam, or another grunt? Should I poach them in a syrup, maybe throw a little tardio into the syrup, bake the rhubarb into a custardy vanilla cake batter, reduce the syrup into a jelly?
Dear friends, around the third week of April I ask myself, self, is it *really* so important to wait until the local strawberries come in? Sitting on my desk this afternoon, those strawberries answered my question. Such a bright, deep, heady fragrance. Such a bright, deep, heady taste. Such promise, such hope, in such a small, beautiful package.