But you know I know when it's a dream

Well, it seems as though monthly is about as often as I'm able to update around here these days, so I think that I'll just make my peace with that. We've been having warm, warm weather around here and enjoying lots of time outdoors. We're also "working" on potty-training, so there's been a fair amount of naked time. There's something about mundane/every day things being done in the nude that brings me no end of joy. See what I mean?

As usual, we're really loving the onset of fresh fruit and vegetable season. Tres has been stopping every other day or so at the fruit stand for strawberries and we've been devouring them by the pound. After last year's experimenting, I decided to make just one type of strawberry jam this year: the "grown up strawberry jam" from The Blue Chair Jam Book (the amounts have been scaled down here, but it's the only version I could find online). It's quite delicious and the recipe is easy to follow (and high yielding - I got 8 half pints, from the full recipe in the book), plus you end up with most of a bottle of Drambuie to enjoy afterward.

I've been able to try out a bunch of the strawberry recipes that I've had saved away this year too. Here are a few I recommend. First up, is by far my favorite thus far and super easy too, strawberries in wine, with mascarpone cream. I don't think the wine part is even necessary, if you have wonderful, ripe berries, but mascarpone and strawberries are just a match made in heaven (also, I've been mispronouncing mascarpone my whole life - it's mas-car-pone, not mar-sca-pone. . . whoops). Seriously, go make it right now. Some other delicious options: strawberry summer cake, strawberries and cream popsicles, and, for the traditionalists, this is still the tastiest shortcake around.

Even the baby's wearing strawberries!