Strawberry Feels Forever
I'm seeing SO much squee for The Avengers movie everywhere that I actually feel hesitant to admit that I feel utterly indifferent to seeing it, and more so every time I see more hype about it. I'm not entirely sure what it is that holds me back, since I did enjoy the Iron Man movies (yes, even the second one)--but I think on reflection that that was more to do with liking RDJ and Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury cameo, rather than any great connection to the universe itself. I had zero interest in seeing both the Thor and Captain America films, too, which probably says something--perhaps just that this particular thing isn't MY thing. Even after I've seen it, I can't imagine I'll have any desire for fic or fan art.
I must also admit that I don't actually understand the squee over the (apparently) unbelievable attractiveness of the cast (with the exception of RDJ, obviously). Tom Hiddleston seems like a lovely guy, no doubt about it, and I can theoretically see how people might find him attractive... but I'm just not at all attracted to him myself. And the rest of them barely even register for me, beyond a vague impression of muscles. (Which... are so not my thing.) Again, I'm certain that says more about me and my own tastes than about anybody or anything else, but it does leave me feeling as though everybody else is giggling themselves silly about a joke that I just fundamentally don't get.
I'm delighted that so many people are enjoying the film, don't get me wrong, and the last thing I want to do is rain on anybody's squee parade or diminish anybody's joy in the movie or the fandom. And perhaps I'll feel differently after I see it, in which case I'll be happy to revise my opinion. (I'm sure I will see it at some point; I just feel no great pull to do so now.) But as it stands now, I'm very happy for everybody, just... also bewildered.
Okay, I just had to get that off my chest, after nearly a week of being relentlessly pelted with Tom Hiddleston's face. I'm glad people are having fun with it, though. It's always good to see a resurgence of fannish enthusiasm, even if it isn't a fandom that calls to me. :-)
But that's not really what I wanted to talk about today. What I wanted to talk about was... strawberries. Because, through a series of strange events, I recently came to have a whole lot of strawberries, and the search for a recipe to do them justice took me on a nostalgia trip.
I like strawberries. A lot. Beyond just thinking that they're tasty in virtually every preparation, I also have a lot of fond memories associated with them. We grew tiny little strawberries in my backyard when I was very little, and I never stopped thinking that this was anything short of miraculous. (Strawberries! Growing in MY garden! Was there ever anything so amazing? You could buy them at the market, but we were growing our own! Out of dirt!) I could hardly wait for them to ripen; I remember checking on them every single morning to determine if today would be THE day. They were horribly undersized, and too scarce to even be called any kind of crop, but I was enthralled.
But my fondest association with strawberries tracks back to the very first time I went to France, when I was living in Tours as a college student. Through our program, we were all randomly placed with families (or, quite frequently, single women) who supplied room and board for us. In pretty much all the other cases, several students from our group were assigned to each household, but I was the only one in the program who was assigned to the Monsieur and Madame A, which admittedly made me nervous that I'd be lonely or wouldn't fit in. It seemed like an intimidating prospect, but I was determined to make as good an impression as I possibly could.
I needn't have been so anxious. Monsieur and Madame A (and their two grown children) turned out to be some of the most wonderfully sweet, funny, quirky, brilliant, and generous people I've ever met. They were so kind and so welcoming, and they almost instantly made me feel at home, like one of their own children. I've never been able to figure out why they took such a particular shine to me, out of the other students in the house, but I was grateful for it because I thought the world of them and their positive, friendly, open-minded attitudes. There was a tremendous generosity about them that went well beyond the monetary; they were people who were generous of enthusiasm and spirit, and I still find them inspiring in the way they treated others.
("Only you," one of my male friends said once we were all back home in the US and had told all our stories about living abroad. "Only you could go to France and get randomly placed in a house where they cracked out champagne and a cake for your birthday, and packed you special little lunches with cakes, and brought you breakfast in bed!" I tried to explain that the breakfast-in-bed thing had only happened a few times, and most of those had been when I was sick with bronchitis and Mme A was just trying to look after me a bit, because she was a nice person and sensed that I was totally inept at doing that for myself. But it is probably true that my experience was not the standard one for students abroad, and that was down to sheer luck on my part.)
You may be wondering how any of this relates to strawberries, and this is how: in addition to Madame A's many other talents and virtues, she was a truly excellent cook with great passion for good food. (It is because of her that ratatouille and quenelles and quiches and roasted chicken and potatoes are, even now, total comfort food to me. If I can ever roast a chicken as well as Madame A, I will consider myself accomplished.) But one of her greatest specialties was in the area of jams and jellies and marmalades. She never used the store-bought kind; she always made them from scratch, and they were always SO good: quince jelly, orange marmalade, black currant, red currant, raspberry, apricot.
And strawberry.
There was something especially magical about the strawberry, and I'm not quite sure what it was. It transformed the morning tartine into something divine, alongside a salty smear of butter on baguette. And when Madame A was making it... oh my sweet lord. I always knew which days were strawberry-jam-making days, because I'd be turning down our street on my way home from class, and I'd be able to smell the intoxicating, jammy aroma of strawberries cooking down, wafting down our street and perfuming the neighborhood and almost certainly driving our neighbors insane with ravenous hunger and rampant Jam Envy. And I'd just smile and smile, because I knew that it meant there would be strawberry jam on the breakfast table, soon enough.
So that memory, you see, is the pinnacle of my strawberry love. It's the standard for superior strawberry-related experiences, the one I'm always trying to match, the rose-tinted remembrance that never fades. My own strawberry sauce comes close, but it's never quite there. So imagine my joy and delight, then, when I decided to use my recent strawberry bounty to make this Strawberry Crumb Cake from the Alchemy Baking blog, and the smell that it produced as it was baking was a match for that intoxicating memory of Madame A's jam, all those years ago. :D
Not only that: the recipe is incredibly delicious, too: tender cake, crispy topping, not-too-sweet vanilla-tinged berries that melt in your mouth. It's also beautiful, and this is the part where I would ordinarily upload photos to prove this claim, but the camera and the laptop do not want to play nicely together for some reason today, so that will have to happen another time.
And best of all, the recipe that I linked to provides all sorts of thoughtful conversions, so whether you are baking in the US or the UK or... almost anywhere in the world, really, you ought to be able to find useful quantities and instructions without a hassle! So you can all share this slice of heaven and all know, if only for a short time, what it was like to appreciate Madame A's strawberry jam. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. (Speaking only for myself, I am now very, very cheery at the prospect of a long strawberry season ahead and more opportunities to make this cake before it's over.)
Aside from the strawberry feels and all that up above, life is good, if mostly unremarkable... which is good, actually, if you're in a de-stressing period. The dinner and date at the Lebanese restaurant that I mentioned in the last post were both very successful, albeit cut shorter than it would have been, due to a spectacularly dramatic thunderstorm that had it pouring rain down my chimney and through the bathroom vents. (Don't worry; it's all fine. And the restaurant is EVEN BETTER than advertised--clairvoyant12, I might just have to take you there. They're magicians!) We took a rain check for dessert. ;-)
Not much else to mention. The writing continues, and I continue to be happy with it. I rescued two more homeless plants, for my Garden of Misfit Plants: two pretty green-and-white hostas, which have been transplanted to the front bed, near the rescued daisies, and so far seem to be doing well. The other resident Misfit Plants are thriving; Vince-the-vine is outdoing himself with the buds, although I've given up on trying to separate him from Howard-the-bush, and the redheaded lilies that I rescued two years ago seem to be in love with their location near Remus-the-holly, judging from the way they've filled out the space.
Have also agreed to watch the godchildren--Goddaughter, Godson, and Mini-me--for some extended time this summer, which should be fun, as well as a nice vacation for their parents. I had a long conversation with their mother, Cousin M, about Goddaughter and her progress in her first-grade progress. It turns out that she loves languages and shows an aptitude for them, is tremendously artistic and imaginative and wants to take on every creative project that drifts through her head, and is a massive ham when performing in front of large groups, but goes utterly blushy and shy and self-conscious in smaller, more intimate groups.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I'm pretty sure Goddaughter has inherited my personality. *g* Poor dear...