Real Strawberries: Reason Enough to Love England

(First published in early August, 2008)

It has now been one almost ten days since I last ate a locally grown English strawberries. I have eaten some U.S.-grown strawberries, shipped to Maryland from California, and didn't enjoy them at all. They were suffering--as does most of our fruit--from genetic engineering.

I'm not saying that the almost-edible heart-shaped red things from California are actually genetically engineered, in the scientific sense. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't (I'm not investigating them at the moment, simply writing a nice little story about the wondrous British strawberry.) But assuredly, the ultra-firm flesh and too-firmly-attached stems on U.S. supermarket strawberries signify that something has rendered a tender fruit tough.

That something would be, perhaps, our demand to have strawberries year-round, making it imperative to make them shipping-proof. It is, actually, strawberry season at the moment in the East, where I live. But to obtain local strawberries, probably of the same case-hardened variety as the California ones and therefore unsatisfactory, I'd have to scour at least a 100-square-mile area with no reasonable hope of success. So, I will just continue to long for the next English strawberries I encounter. In England.

So now, I have decided, to avoid disappointment, that my strawberry consumption must be limited to England, requiring trips in spring and summer.

I had already determined that Christmas must be in England. The stores are closed. The restaurants are, by and large, closed, except those in hotels so that the guests may dine. Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, most things are closed. This is as refreshing to a person living in a genetically modified society such as the U.S. as are the English strawberries.

Best of all, one CANNOT get strawberries in England at Christmas. Sure, because of the EU, some sort of imported strawberries can be had. And, frankly, because they come from Spain, they actually travel a much shorter distance than the ones from California or even Argentina that we get in Maryland. I don't buy them, though. Why? Because at Christmas, there are actual seasonally appropriate goodies to feast upon, creating unique taste memories. In short, there are gastronomic treats that add texture to life that is not possible in the texturally impoverished United States.

There is, for example, Christmas pudding. Americans, by and large, won't eat prunes and some won't even eat raisins. And certainly, they'll eat no other forms of dried fruit. Most Americans loathe fruitcake, making rude jokes about it; it does leave one to wonder who, then, buys the abundance of them on offer during the artificially long Christmas season. But that, too, is a tale for another day.

A proper English Christmas pudding (like the ones from Creber's, a world-class gourmet shop in Tavistock, Devon) is mainly dried fruit and some booze and--oh, yes--suet. Americans can't bring themselves to eat suet. Of course, it isn't really eating suet; like any fat, it melts into the confection and serves the same function as peanut oil. Artery clogging? Perhaps. But one doesn't eat Christmas pudding every day. Only at Christmas.

Or, one can always drink what my friend Steve Waller, wine-merchant with Charles Steevenson Wines, Ltd, in Tavistock, Devon, calls "Christmas pudding in a glass." It is, quite simply, a heady, romantic, luscious muscat wine. Americans, by and large, don't do dessert wines, either. As a people, we are libatorily boring.

Well, there it is. First I was longing for a good strawberry. A tender, sweet, ripe, and relatively small strawberry; U.S. versions are the Arnold Schwartzenegger of strawberries. Now I long for a nice Christmas pudding, or a wee tot of that muscat. Steve? Can you ship?

Probably not; U.S. blue laws prohibit the individual import of global delicacies. So I'd better wrap it up; I need to book the Christmas trip before jet fuel prices go up any further.