It’s officially strawberry season here in Northern California.   Have I mentioned how much I love California?  Have I mentioned how much I love strawberries?  Can you guess how much I love my local farmers’ market?

*Happy sigh*

ZOMG! Strawberries!

I had no intention of getting strawberries the last time I went to the market.  But the farmer beckoned me over, offered me a sample, and I couldn’t pass.  These were the sweetest, juiciest, most amazing strawberries I’d had in years.   I scraped together my remaining dollar bills and quarters, and handed them over for a basket of bright, beautiful berries.

Now, I don’t know if you’re like me, but if I find myself in possession of an incredible ingredient like strawberries, I immediately start to think about what I should bake.  Strawberry shortcakes? Strawberry pie? Strawberry preserves? Strawberry crepes?  Strawberry crisp? SO MANY OPTIONS!

But as I munched and slurped away at the berries, fresh out of the basket, I realized that maybe I didn’t need to bake them into some over-the-top confection.  They were treat enough as they were.  Raw.  Fresh.  That’s how I wanted them. They tasted like spring time and summer in my mouth.

I ate the entire basket within a day.

Breakfast:

So Perfect

Sliced strawberries and steel cut oats.  Nothing else.  No syrup or cinnamon or anything.  Just strawberries and oats.  And wow it was good.

And then, I had strawberries for dinner, too!

Strawberry Salad

Talk about a colorful salad!   Spinach, mustard greens, edible flowers, strawberries, fresh tomatoes, avocados, and rainbow carrots… all from the farmer’s market!   Topped with crumbled tofu, nutritional yeast, pepper, and oil & vinegar.

Rainbow Carrot!

The rainbow carrots were so pretty!  And the strawberries were delicious… and I love my life.

I can’t wait until the next farmers’ market!  Maybe next time, I’ll buy two baskets so I can bake some of them.

My blog works! Yay!   Still missing the header, but whatever!   I’m just so happy that all the links work and that the dashboard displays correctly and that I can post!  Yay!   

This past week I’ve made a lot of delicious things… although I haven’t really photographed them all.  But still.   I made this chocolate strawberry cake for my roommate’s birthday:

chocolate bliss

Two layers of dark chocolate cake separated by a layer of delicious strawberry filling:

soooo good

Yum yum yum.   

Also I made pumpkin muffins from this recipe.  Isa Chandra Moskowitz is my all time vegan crush.  I love Post Punk Kitchen so much… and I practically salivated when my sister gave me the Vegan Brunch book for Christmas.   To be perfectly honest, I don’t always trust vegan cooks and I sure don’t trust vegan cookbooks.  In my defense I became vegan in 1998… before people realized that vegan food could actually taste *gasp* good!   And so I’ve spent most of my life married to my Betty Crocker cookbook… veganizing all the recipes myself.  But then I discovered Post Punk Kitchen and fell in love.  Isa never lets me down!   Best pumpkin muffins ever.   

muffins muffins muffins everywhere

Close up!

I ate 3 of these.

I was bound and determined to get some good pictures of the inside of the muffins as well… so I tore one apart, only to discover my camera wasn’t playing nice.  Oh well!  Guess I’ll just eat it…

best pumpkin muffin ever

I went through a couple muffins before I got this picture.  And then of course I ate this one, too.   I made mine with whole wheat, and added a splash of soymilk to counteract the dryness of whole wheat.   It was perfect.  Soft, moist, spiced, and not too sweet– perfect.   Next time I’m dropping dollops of “cream cheese” filling in the middle.   

Scones and Nanaimo bars coming soon.