My phone rang at 7:30 this morning. When I rolled over to answer it groggily, my mom's perky 'been up for hours' voice greeted me. "I'm going to go pick some strawberries this morning. Would you like to come along?" she asked. After my non-enthusiastic response, she suggested that she take the kids berry picking with her friends and her. Lest you think that I responded this way because I was tired, let me tell you. I absolutely hated going to pick strawberries when I was a kid. Never mind the fact that we got to skip school that day, when my dad said it was berry picking day, you knew you were in for it.. It never failed that it was the hottest day of the year thus far, and, because we had to pick enough strawberries to make preserves enough to share with everyone on the planet, it was also the longest day of the year this far--and my bucket was never full enough.

After crawling around in the dirt for what seemed like all day with the sun beating down with such a fierce intensity that it could only be considered malevolent, my dad would finally decide that we had enough strawberries and we could crawl back into our hot, dusty car for the long ride home. At least, that's how I remember it. And my mom knows it, so she offered to take my kids along with her.

A few hours later, my kids showed up at the door with 2 1/2 shopping bags full of lusciously red ripe strawberries--and happy faces! They picked all those in an hour they informed me, and then went out to eat lunch at a restaurant. So now what was I to do with all those beautiful strawberries, but make some preserves? Now you must understand that making preserves was an immense undertaking when I was a kid. We washed and cored strawberries for days, or so it seemed. Now as an adult, making preserves has always sounded like such a good idea, and one that I have almost tried many a year, but, with such fond childhood memories, it probably won't surprise you that I never actually did it. I even went so far as to buy canning lids and pectin last year, but that's as far as I went.

Well, stop the presses! Today I made freezer preserves, as well as the more traditional canned ones. We'll see which we like better, but I am hoping it's the freezer preserves because they are such a cinch to make. Who knew? I always imagined my girlfriends that gave me jars of preserves at Christmas time as domestic martyrs, slaving away for hours over a hot stove. Growing up, canning preserves was such an unpleasant, labor-intensive, massive undertaking that it has taken me thirty years to try it. Hmmm. Maybe next time, I'll even go along for the picking.