Texas Locavore

Hear ye, hear ye! The strawberries have arrived! My excitement knew no bounds when I caught my first whiff at the downtown farmers’ market on Saturday. I can’t imagine NOT being moved to squealing and jumping by the season’s first strawberries, but full disclosure: I was practically raised in a strawberry patch. When I was wee, my mother was working on her PhD on the effects of raised beds, varied spacing, and nitrogen levels on strawberry physiology. (Her name, should you care to look up her dissertation, was Barbara L. Goulart; today her surname is Bowling and she’s an artist.) Experimenting involved growing berries under various conditions, counting and weighing them. And then? Well, we couldn’t let those little vitamin-C packed gems go to waste! But brace yourselves, beloved Texans, for the lesson my mother taught me: Bigger isn’t necessarily better where strawberries are concerned. The little guys at the farmers’ markets now through April are some of the sweetest, most strawberry-flavored you’ll find. Why do they taste better than the California-grown whoppers you’ll find at the grocery stores? Mom explains, “The big ones are bred for shipping, and that means they’re going to be firmer-textured. But it’s the aromatics that really make a strawberry taste like a strawberry. And the ones that are really dense and soft have the most aromatics and they don’t ship for shit.” She also explained that strawberries don’t ripen if they’re picked too early. “A peach,” she says, “if you pick it hard, will actually get sweeter. A tomato does too. Strawberries don’t do that.” They’ll turn redder, but they won’t get any more flavorful. If all this leaves you dying for strawberries, you have a couple of options. You’re likely to find a few boxes if you get to the farmers’ markets early this afternoon and Saturday. You can also pick-your-own at Sweet Berry Farm, at two locations just east and west of Austin. If you’re super berry-inclined, buy my mom’s book, Berry Grower’s Companion, and grow your own!