Of strawberries and cream

Several days ago Baby decided that we desperately needed some fresh strawberries. Baby has rather limited capability in this regard, so I was commissioned to carry out the venture. There followed a long, epic-like strawberry quest, which rivaled the strawberry caper conducted by the Roman centurion in Asterix the Gaul. Fortunately I was able to identify the exact context in which the strawberries were required: fresh, ripe, sweet, and ground up into a milkshake. On Saturday I spotted a lovely picture of a strawberry shake at the Atlanta Bread Company. We were on the right track. But no strawberry-flavoured drink would do: we had to make our own, from fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries. Michael was very impressed at how refined Baby's tastes were, and offered to run to the grocery store and pick up a carton of strawberries. This wouldn't do, however, as grocery store strawberries are notoriously expensive and unripe. We decided to hold out until Monday, when we would be going by the farmer's market in hopes that fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries could be found.

Yesterday was a day unto itself, but the upshot of it was that there were no fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries to be found, not even for ready money. This was a crushing blow indeed. As a final resort, we stopped by the grocery store to look and found pitiful, pathetic little flats of unripe, greenish, sickly-looking strawberries for the iniquitous price of $4.99 per carton. Baby wasn't very impressed, and I wearily concurred. The quest ended in failure, arduous and fruitless.

Upon returning home, Baby decided that the idea of a milkshake was a sound one, despite there being no strawberries, so we decided on a chocolate-peanut butter shake as consolation prize. No recipe exists for this shake, but we knew what to do by instinct: we poured milk, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, peanut butter, and leftover vanilla ice cream into the blender, and ended up with a really smooth, delicious, chocolatey-peanut buttery milkshake that almost made up for the lack of strawberries. Almost. In the process we spattered the counter and cupboards with chocolate spray (Duh! That's why the side of the blender is clear, so you can see the progress without opening the lid!), burned the 7-layer bars we were baking for my office Thanksgiving party tomorrow (Moral: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush = a dessert in the oven is worth two in the blender - never neglect the one in your excitement over the other), and broke the ice cream scoop in our eagerness - back to using the melon-baller we used when we first got married. We retired from the field of battle victorious but weary. Oh, well. It's a short work-week, and there will be good food aplenty on Thursday.