The Sweetest Season of All- Strawberry Season

Hooray! This week’s Everything’s Famtastic post is brought to you from a germ-free household! This is very exciting news, let me tell you. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you ought to go back and read my post from last week talking about how our family was knocked over one after the other like a set of bowling pins with a stomach virus. But healthy we are and here I am!

We are still finding and ridding our garden of strips of glittery streamers and pieces of confetti leftover from the confetti bomb my daughter and her friends gleefully enjoyed at her party last Saturday (see also, last week’s post here).

It’s wonderful that we are all healthy, because that means we can get doing things outdoors. Like soaking up the Vitamin D-filled sunshine… Like having spontaneous waterbomb fights over the hedge with the neighbours… Like taking advantage of the season and picking strawberries!!!

I might still have some adjustment issues with being an Australian expat living in Germany. Sure, a few months back I even posted about some of my personal difficulties of living an expat life here. But I’ll tell you what, I have totally found my groove when it comes to Erbeerzeit in this country.

You seriously have NO IDEA how much I love strawberries.

Seasonal Differences

I know most people around the world think that Australia experiences 365 day of sunshine a year, country-wide. Like some kind of eternal summer. But that’s actually not true. I mean, Australia is a massive continent, almost as large as the USA or most of western and central Europe. That means there are a range of climates and landscapes and such. So yes, there is summer, but actually also autumn and winter and spring. It’s just that most of Australia never hits super low winter temperatures or such extreme regional temperature differences like other parts of the world (such as Germany) does.

For all you Australians who think that winter is dark and grey and cold there, you ain’t seen nothin’!! Imagine living up north in the Scandinavian countries during their winter. Oh my! No wonder they all stay indoors, brew their own alcoholic spirits and get creative with music (from mega-successful electronic artists such as Avicii, MØ, Kygo to the more outrageous Eurovision entries seen in recent times from Iceland and Finland). Anyway..

That reason, I suspect, is why the seasons aren’t celebrated so dramatically in Australia. Or maybe such euphoria over the changing seasons just passed me by??? Here in Germany, every season is accompanied by season-appropriate retail overload of home decorations, clothes with patterns and designs and food offerings. Seasonal food is great, don’t get me wrong. And if you want to talk about the environment, it’s really important to try and mostly seasonal produce. But that’s not quite the point I am trying to make.

In Germany, come autumn, the stores are filled with home decorations in every size, shape and texture of pumpkins, nuts and colourful leaves you never dreamed of. Spring? Bunnies, Easter eggs and cute little birds, in sweet pastel shades. And even though Australian stores and restaurants surely make some fast money on seasonal and holiday-related goods, I just have the feeling that the Australian seasons aren’t so clearly and rigidly delineated or celebrated.

Crazy for Asparagus?

Another example here in Germany is Spargelzeit that famed extra “season” of the year where everyone seems to go absolutely gaga for asparagus. Little wooden huts pop up in multiple roadside locations in every town selling bunches and bunches of white (!) asparagus. Restaurants start offering Spargelbuffets where you can eat an enormous, 3-course asparagus-based meal. Homewares stores sell tall cooking pots and special asparagus serving tongs (who knew?!?). Asparagus is okaaayyyy, but..

Better Yet- Strawberries!

Strawberries have my heart! Late-May through to late-June is a glorious time of year. Why? Because the strawberries fields all across the countryside open up for people to come and pick their own strawberries. Of course you can buy punnets all ready to go as well. But me? I love the Do-It-Yourself approach. BYO buckets and tubs, get directions to the best part of the field, and fill up to your heart’s content.

Our family always ends up collecting a lot of strawberries and we go picking at least once every season, if not a few times. Of course, sampling of the produce whilst picking is allowed *Yum!*. There is always the competitive streak amongst the kids, over who picked the largest, the smallest, the reddest strawberry. And never mind the “1 for the bucket, 1 for me” distribution pattern the younger kids sometimes fall into 😉.

So, this past week we went to a local field we had never been to before, but had been recommended by a friend as being a goldmine of perfectly ripe, red berries at the moment. And we were not disappointed. 7 and a half kilograms later, we returned home happy (and a little bit fuller than when we had arrived!).

We have some grand plans for our strawberries 😉. Strawberries and cream. Strawberry and vodka liqueur. Strawberry jam. Strawberry cake. Strawberry smoothies. Shall I go on?!? Strawberries are packed with Vitamin C. Mega-healthy! That means all of the above are good for you too, right?!?. Somebody please tell me that the liqueur has great health benefits too!!

Last night the production line for jam production was full in force. 4 kilos of strawberries bottled up into jars of mouth-watering marmelade. Berries frozen. Berries eaten. Strawberry cake finished. Unfortunately there are no more left to be able to make strawberry vodka. Looks like we must go picking in the fields again next week… 😉

So there you have it. Erdbeerzeit in Germany. Do you ever go out to local farms to pick your own produce? Is there some fruit or vegetable that you really look forward to being able to eat each year? Share with us below!