Strawberries & Cream

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well I’m the mother of a little girl we’ll call Cali. Now, that is NOT the name I gave her but when she was three years old she told me she liked the name California and that it would be her new name, because her given name, she said, “broke down”

She has no problem expressing what she wants, that kid. Recently, she was a bit disappointed by the fall selection of fruit I picked up from the farmers market. We have a fruit bowl in the kitchen and I loaded it with apples and pears.

“Mommy, I don’t like apples anymore,” she tells me. “Can we get some other fruit next time we go to the farmers market?”

“Okay baby, like what?”

“I want blueberries and strawberries and…..

At that point I tuned her out, strawberries are not even in season. But lo and behold she spotted some on our next trip to the market, they were surely shipped from Timbuktu (or California) to Atlanta, but I let her put them in the buggy. And guess what? She didn’t eat a single berry.

Not one.

So my hand was forced. I could either let a pint of expensive (out of season) strawberries go to waste or make something with them. My coworkers were very pleased that I chose to do the latter.

Here are the muffins I made sitting in the office kitchen. I topped them with freshly whipped cream.

This is Cali kid studying the byproduct of her wanton abandonment of the strawberries. The lesson here is: eat what you ask for or your mommy will bake it and give it away.