It’s that wonderful time of year, when the sweet scent of fresh strawberries entices you at farm stands and the pint baskets of the ruby fruit shines brightly in the displays of other, long-traveled fruit in the grocery stores.

For a lot of us, picking your own strawberries is an annual celebration, a family outing, and an economical way to stock up on enough fruit to last until next spring. Strawberry season is a major event in England, with people spending all day in the fields. Of course, that’s probably because strawberry season coincides with the three weeks every year it isn’t raining in England. But I have a formal strawberry serving set I bought while I lived there. It’s a large white ceramic bowl with a holder for a small cream pot and another for sugar. Trouble is we ate so many strawberries while cleaning them that we never had enough to justify using the set! Oddly, the Brits had never heard of strawberry Daiquiris. In correcting that omission, I feel I did my part to cement Anglo-American relations.

Not only are they delicious, but strawberries are a health food, rich in Vitamins C and K, potassium, manganese, phytonutrients, and antioxidants. But listing all of that scientific stuff takes too much fun out of simply enjoying this gift of spring!

If you are salivating at the thought of strawberries & cream, strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream, strawberry jam, strawberry bread, strawberry cake, strawberry sundaes, strawberry Daiquiris, strawberry pie, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry trifle, strawberries in champagne and strawberry sorbet, here’s help in finding where to pick ‘em. The folks at Mid-Shore Life, an on-line site about activities in central Delmarva, did the legwork and found all of the places that offer P-I-Y.

http://midshorelife.com/article/where-pick-strawberries-eastern-shore From what I can tell, there are no pick-your-own strawberry places on Virginia’s Shore for which I offer them my sincere sympathies.