Mom's Advice

I spent most of the day yesterday with my mom. Eight to ten years ago, we both would have found that amount of time with each other unbearable. A combination of college, and now living in separate neighborhoods, have made spending time with each other a much more prized part of my life.
We spent the first half of yesterday outside in the front yard working on the garden and resting. We were sitting on the porch with the dog, talking about our respective gardens, and we came to the topic of strawberries.

I have been eating our strawberry sorbetto and gelato as if it were my only role at Capogiro. I sample the pan - for the good of the customer, of course - then I buy a cup (and by cup I mean pint) to take home with me. Strawberry season is too short to skip out on ANY opportunity to enjoy them. I don't have any serious food allergies, but over the past few weeks, I noticed a few tiny bumps popping up on the back of my hands. They don't hurt or itch or anything, and no one has noticed them without me pointing them out, so I haven't been terribly concerned. But a few weeks into strawberry season at Capogiro, I had more little bumps than I could ignore, so I tried to think of what I could be allergic to, or perhaps overindulging in. Mangoes? Milk? Tree nuts? Soy? Hand soap? Grouchy customers? I was fairly stumped.

While discussing our love of strawberries, my mom said that when she was little, she'd eat pint after pint of strawberries each week. Through the strawberry season, she'd consume so many that she'd break out in hives! Not serious, terrible-looking ones, but hives nonetheless. Did that stop her? Slow her consumption? Encourage her to search for other delicious berries to replace them with? Noooooooooo. She kept eating them, at the same rate, for as long as possible.

While I only have a few spotty spots on my hands, I have to say that I think the mystery has been solved! Strawberries are likely the cause of the little bumps! Solution? I don't think that word applies to the situation at hand. I don't want to stop eating strawberries. In fact, how could I possibly do that? I don't plan to and you can't make me. A week-long test with zero strawberry consumption just isn't something I care to attempt. I don't think I could actually survive that test anyways.

Anyways, I'm going to follow mom's advice and if you think you love strawberries as much as I do, you're welcome to follow it too: Strawberries are worth it. Eat 'em til you drop! The season is short, so make the absolute best of it :)