Читать книгу Plato and Potato Chips - June Inc. Luvisi - Страница 19

Posted on September 1, 2010 by June

Oh, how my mother loved strawberries! Strawberry pies, strawberry ice cream, strawberry cream filled chocolates, strawberry tarts, strawberry everything! I remember how she would wait for the peddler coming down the alley shouting strawberries, or at least something that sounded like strawberries. His voice would be hoarse from the repeated shouting, but we all knew what he was calling. When the price was right, and only when the price was right, my mother would buy them in quart sized cartons and make her memorable strawberry pie.

She would roll out her tender pie dough, fill it with the sugar coated scarlet berries, and then carefully interlace the narrow strips she had set aside to top her work of art. When the pie emerged from the oven, the color of the berries had changed to a rosy pink, and the glistening berry syrup ran out of the small diamonds created by the latticework and gave off an enticing aroma. I can still smell it.

Yet most of all, when I think of strawberries, somehow I think of strawberry tarts. Actually, these were tarts from the bakery. Talk about gleaming red perfect berries (often topped by an inviting dollop of snowy whipped cream)! Talk about having the oozing berries nestled in crispy, delicious tart shells! The tarts, purchased at the nearby bakery on North Avenue, became a dessert mainstay at our home when strawberries were in season.

Besides looking and tasting so good, the tarts made me happy for another reason. After my mom purchased that first apartment building, she started to make more and more trips outside our home. We didn’t have a car when we lived in the two flat, so the trips to the new property were pretty long ones made by streetcar. I missed her, of course, and when she came home with neatly tied white boxes of those treasures from the bakery, her return spelled double happiness. I can see the two of us savoring the moments.

As time has passed, I’ve tried many a bakery in search of strawberry tarts as good as those my mom brought home. Found some very good ones, too. But something is always missing. Never do they taste quite as delectable as those juicy red strawberry tarts my mother and I shared so many years ago.