It’s Strawberry Season!
I love pretty much all fruit. But my absolute favorite is strawberries.
Growing up in Canada, strawberry season was usually June - August and the BEST strawberries were the ones that you picked yourself at a local farm. Lucky for us kids (and my parents too!), we had an amazing farm ~20 minutes from our home. Every year, when the roadside signs announced that strawberry season had started, my mom would pile us kids into the station wagon and head over to the farm. We carried our little baskets and pails, hopped on the tractor-pulled trailer and drove out into the fields.
There would be rows upon rows of strawberry bushes and we would scream with delight when we saw the bright, red, juicy fruit waiting to be picked. The farm assistants would show us where we could stop picking and off we went to fill our baskets…and out tummies. I remember picking the first strawberry of the season, excitedly showing my mom how big it was, before I pulled off the stem and bit into its juicy goodness. Oh how delicious it was to taste that sweet berry, warm from the morning sun. I can still taste the very first bite of a sun-drenched strawberry, juices dribbling down my chin.
The next hour or so would be a combination of straight consumption of berries, with a few being dropped in my pail. After our containers were full, we would flag down the tractor and enjoy the ride back to the car, hands covered in strawberry juice, talking about all the different ways we would use our harvest: jams, fruit crisps, chopped over ice cream, and spooned over homemade meringues with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. To say I was excited was an understatement.
Looking back, I never once thought about the calorie or sugar content of strawberries. I didn’t worry about the fat content of the ice cream, or how “bad” the whipped cream was. I was excited about not only enjoying the food that I had picked, but also the short-lived season of delicious strawberries.
But somewhere along the way, the “Diet Mentality” came into play and I started thinking about how many calories I was eating, forcing myself to weigh or measure my food, or eliminate it completely due to the sugar content. The “Food Police” had entered into my subconscious and I started labelling all fruit as “bad” because it would cause me to fall out of ketosis (I’ll save that story for another blog post). Oh, and to make it even more challenging for me, I told myself that I needed to exercise more to either (a) deserve to eat fruit or (b) combat my lack of willpower because I had eaten fruit. Thinking back, I can see why I was so sad and miserable; my joy of eating had been replaced with an abundance of restrictions and rules.
But now, as I continue to heal and practice Intuitive Eating, I have found my joy in food again. I no longer look at food as the enemy and I listen to what my body needs. So imagine my happiness when my husband came home today with a big box of strawberries, straight from the farms just south of Oxnard CA, considered by many to be The Strawberry Capital of the World! I quickly found the biggest berry in the basket, rinsed it off, and bit into its juicy goodness - heaven. And now, as I type this blog, with a big bowl of berries next to my laptop, I am smiling as I remember all those summers with my mom - both out in the field, and later in the kitchen as we cooked up delicious strawberry jams and desserts. Intuitive Eating has helped me restore my relationship with food and I know that it can help you too.
What’s your favorite way to enjoy strawberries? Share your ideas in the comments below as I am always looking for new ways to enjoy my favorite fruit 🍓🍓🍓
