I love strawberries!

For me, they are dessert. The natural sweetness, the bright red, the little-speck seeds: everything about strawberries is perfect.

Despite the wintery season and the correspondingly high prices, I found some strawberries at the supermarket and had to indulge: it was my birthday, after all. I chopped them up, sprinkled some sugar on them, and the next night, a simple strawberry syrup was ready to top my chocolate birthday cake.

It was perfect!

What is your favorite fruit?

I was in a wintery soup mood the other day, so I made this very yummy carrot and ginger soup. I think I had less ginger than the recipes calls for and I forgot to add the parsely at the end, but it was very very yummy!

If you have an ice cream maker, why not make some sorbet? It is so easy and good. I made it the first time last weekend. (It didn’t last long.)

1. Boil 2 cups water and 2 cups sugar until sugar is dissolved.
2. Let it cool a little and then add 2 cups orange juice.
3. Put it in an ice cream maker and let it freeze.
4. Eat and enjoy.

The other day, Simply Recipes shared a tangerine sorbet recipe. It also sounds good!

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, here are some tips from David Lebovitz on how you can still make ice cream.

Confession: I went 27 years before eating celery root.

We made soup Sunday based on this recipe. It was so delicious!

Then today I read Orangette’s post about celery root salad. I think I need to eat this vegetable more often. It may be ugly, but it’s quite tasty.

Have you eaten celery root before?

My husband gave me two cooking books for Christmas.

The first book (and the one I’ll focus on for now) is The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. My husband and I have read the first 40 pages together. This beginning provides a great introduction to simple cooking and the local food movement. Much of the rest of the book is guidelines to some important cooking basics and recipes for simple dishes. For example, the first cooking basic she covers is “vinaigrette.” I really appreciate her suggestions for tweaking the basic vinaigrette, and I look forward to trying them out with my husband, as well as the other recipes.

I appreciate Alice Waters’ call to return to the basics when cooking: food should taste like itself. However, I’m not particularly convinced of the “eat local” movement, and I don’t see myself searching for a farmer’s market. I live in suburban Chicago, and right now it’s cold and snowy. Sorry, Alice Waters! I’m avoiding time on the roads these days, so I don’t anticipate searching for a “local” source for my produce.

I have discovered a grocery store that has better variety, cheaper prices, and better quality produce. I’ll stick with that for now. It’s my new favorite.

What about you? Do you “eat local” and why? Do you think farmer’s market food is superior to supermarket food?