A Weasel for Every Home!: Influenza and ichigo

Some of you might have noticed that I haven't been updating as often this month. Thanks to the influenza epidemic running rampant in my school, I was forced to go to the local doctor (whom I don't trust all that much, frankly) after feeling completely crappy for more than 24 hours. Ultimately I was laid up in bed for a week with chills, fever and cough, stocked to the gills with antipyretics and a full course of Roche Pharmaceuticals' wonder drug Tamiflu. I found it ironic that I was ordered by the doctor to stay home for a week to avoid infecting the kids at school; the same kids who'd given me the flu in the first place! Bloody kids.

Staying at home for a week isn't fun when you're all groggy and feverish, but it gave me a chance to really enjoy the best of the local strawberry season. Up until now, I'd never eaten a fresh strawberry that was even remotely sweet, so I was really surprised and very glad when I took a chance on a punnet I saw in the bargain bin of the supermarket. Must be the fertile soil and favourable weather conditions here, because the berries were the sweetest and most fragrant I'd ever had. Makes me drool just thinking about it ^^

I once saw on TV that the fruit are hand picked when ripe, sorted to within an inch of their life by colour, size and shape, then precision packed for display on supermarket shelves. Might explain why they're not the cheapest fruit around, even though they're grown locally by the tonne. The cheapest, smallest berries ring in at ¥400 for about 20 a punnet, while the really super premium stuff can cost upwards of ¥1000 for a dozen perfectly heart shaped, ping-pong ball sized fruit, packed in a nest of shredded tissue paper in a miniature wooden carton. The biggest I've seen though were featured in an agricultural catalogue for plants that could bear strawberries more than 7cm in length. Heck, I wouldn't mind trying one of those ^^

The strawberries I find in the shops come from various prefectures, including my own, and it's a lot of delicious fun trying to find the best produce. So far, the ones from Tochigi next door seem to be winning out in terms of flavour, though the ones from here are way bigger and juicier. Strangely enough, the "Tochi-otome" cultivar that's used in a lot of limited edition confectionery isn't as always good as the ones without the premium branding.

Of course the glut of strawberries means that associated spinoff products hit the market in a big way too. Everything from prepared sponge cake sandwiches and fresh whipping cream to strawberry flavoured Kit Kat and sweetened condensed milk to dip the berries in. They don't have to bother with the last one though, the strawberries really are good on their own.

One of the products I picked up was a strawberry sprinkle, packed in convenient stick sachets. It seems to be a powdered form of sweetened condensed milk, fortified with calcium and oligosaccharides, reputed to be good for health around these parts. Japan seems to have taken the Splenda revolution quite seriously, because a lot of convenience foods, including this one, use sucralose instead of regular sugar. This stuff isn't too bad since it gives a pleasant, sweet, milky flavour to those strawberries that happen to be a little sour. Can't beat real whipped cream though.

It's not just the supermarkets that get in on the action; family restaurants and other food outlets are turning out limited edition strawberry themed desserts. The Baskin Robbins in the local shopping mall offers crepes filled with strawberries, ice-cream, cake and whipped cream, while Denny's (gee, all very American) will do you a parfait that looks like this:

Rich, delicious and absolutely terrible for the waistline! Methinks I won't be able to go back to eating Aussie strawberries after this. So before the season ends in a few weeks, I'll be prowling the fruit section of the supermarkets for a while yet, and making these: