The Changing Seasons, November 2016

/ Su Leslie
Glass of strawberries flavoured with a little lemon jest and rosemary. Image: Su Leslie, 2016.

Strawberries flavoured with a little lemon jest and rosemary. Image: Su Leslie, 2016.

November is the beginning of strawberry season here. Proper, fat juicy local strawberries.

One of my earliest memories of summer in New Zealand involves going with my mother and brother to pick strawberries. The deal was you turned up with buckets or other containers, which were weighted on entry. You went out into the fields, picked as many berries as you wanted and paid for them an amount based on the difference in weight between the empty containers and the full ones. Luckily, they didn’t weight the pickers — especially the children.

Close up image of strawberries and rosemary stem. Image: Su Leslie, 2016

Fresh, local strawberries. Yum. Image: Su Leslie, 2016

The site of that strawberry garden is now occupied by a school, but there are still some local producers and I think it is still possible to go and pick your own. These days, I’m content to buy them from my local green grocer — 2 punnets for $6 at the moment.

Strawberries don’t tend to last long enough to become ingredients in our household, but I am rather pleased with this little concoction:

I quartered berries, and sprinkled them with a little bit of sugar, which was mixed with lemon zest and few fresh rosemary leaves. I left them to absorb this bit of deliciousness before adding something creamy. I like plain yoghurt, but I suspect the boy-child and the Big T would prefer ice-cream.

I also sprinkled a few toasted almond slices on top, but if I’d been making this for dessert rather than breakfast, I might have made an almond praline with some of the rosemary-infused sugar. Next time perhaps.

Strawberries, yoghurt and sliced almonds in a glass. Image: Su Leslie, 2016

Breakfast, or dessert? Image: Su Leslie, 2016

This post is my contribution to The Changing Seasons, a monthly challenge hosted by Cardinal Guzman. Please visit to see the Cardinal’s month, and find links to other participants.

There are two versions of the challenge:

Version 1 (The Changing Seasons V1):

Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons
Each month, post 5-20 photos in a gallery.
Don’t use photos from your archive. Only new shots.

Version 2 (The Changing Seasons V2):

Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons
Each month, post one photo (recipe, painting, drawing, whatever) that represents your interpretation of the month.
Don’t use archive stuff. Only new material!

26 thoughts on “The Changing Seasons, November 2016”

  1. Pingback: The Changing Seasons: November 2016 – Cardinal Guzman

  4. What a delicious response, Su! Of course where we are, local strawberries are a distant dream, but I’ll enjoy your vicariously. When our girls were younger and still at home, we went blueberry picking at a local place as I did with my b-i-l in France several times. You have to eat some while picking just to keep your strength up!! 🙂

    janet

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  9. Strawberries look so wonderful and shout the beginning of summer … which is what I wish I was looking forward to instead of winter 🙂

    We have a large pick-your-own-farm near us with crops throughout the summer. The season starts with strawberries in the spring. For those unwilling to pick their own, they also have a market selling freshly picked berries and veggies.

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    • It certainly sounds as though you could do with some healing sunshine. I love the “pick your own” idea; it used to be quite common in Auckland — before the price of land rose so much that no-one could afford to grow food on it when they could plant ticky-tacky housing instead.

      I hope you got the gas back on without any more drama, and that you are all feeling better.

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        • Me too. I read recently that half the planet’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years and that with “modern” argiculture and urban development, we could actually run out in the not too distant future. It may be that backyard gardens and organic small-holdings are what will save us. And on that happy note …. Hope you are all doing well.

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    • Thank you. I think it’s a shame more of us don’t get a chance to pick our own fruit. I think we respect food so much more when we have a connection to its origins. I love my garden and enjoy the imperfect fruits of that much more than the more “beautiful” looking food I buy. But I guess land is at such a premium in Singapore, that private gardens aren’t all that common. I do remember from my very brief visit though, that the parks are beautiful.

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  11. Yummy! I might give this a go when summer returns and maybe I have enough strawberries in the garden… this year I managed to pick one every day for a few weeks – my daily treat. Not enough for a bowlful though. (Or I could cheat and use the bought punnets…)

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