Cultural: Strawberry season in Poland

It's over for this year!

Usually strawberry season in Poland starts towards the end of May and goes into June = and we continue to have fresh strawberries then until the end of June or the beginning of July. It all depends on the weather. If it gets too hot too fast or we have too much rain, then the season is shortened.

This year, I started buying them a little earlier than than that because we were getting Spanish strawberries in our local Lidl as early as some time in late March/April.

From Lidl, we were able to get them in 500 gram (just over one US pound) containers.

When we buy them locally, usually they are sold in a special box they call a "Woobeeanka"  (Lubianka) (shown above). This is 2 kilos (about 4.5 lbs.) of strawberries. They are brought to us fresh daily by various small time dealers who sell them out of the back of the cars, parked at any wide spot in the road, hoping you will stop and buy from them. They are usually picked THAT DAY - very early in the morning - as it is getting light at that time of the year before 4 am.

A long time ago when my kids were small-ish, I made shortcakes (and cream) to go with the strawberries. It was delicious, but after a few years, I quit making the shortcakes and we just had cream - real whipping cream with them. This was something my husband taught me. I didn't grow up with real cream - my mom always used Cool Whip, so I had never knowingly eaten 30% or 36% fat real whipping cream, whipped.

However, after we were married, my husband told me how good it was - and that a couple of his mom's recipes used it - so I had to learn to use it too.

But now the season is over and I didn't see any imported strawberries in our local discount supermarkets yesterday.

So, all we can do is look back at pictures and wait til next year.

But you don't have to wait to buy some beautiful fabric!  You can order it today from my sister over in the shopping area! Here are some of the blues she has for sale "by the yard".

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