Monday, May 19, 2008

La Fête des Fraises




I was all excited to go to Vergt yesterday to celebrate strawberries, and celebrate we did, which means we stuffed ourselves silly. The Dordogne is the strawberry capital of France, at least that's what the flyers say, and the best part is that we don't just have strawberries when the season comes around, we get at least five different varieties to choose from, varieties that don't necessarily travel well, although I bet you can get them in Paris anyway. 

There was a table for rating the different varieties; you took a pen and a slip of paper that had spaces for notations as well as your ranking for each kind, then sampled from the five boxes of lettered but unnamed strawberries. After handing in our slips, we got another paper telling us which was which. From best to least best (but still good), mine went Charlotte, Darselect, Cirafine, Mara des Bois, and Gariguette. All of us participated enthusiastically and all of us had wildly different rankings. We weren't sure whether our tastes were that different or whether the strawberries varied quite a lot from berry to berry. Obviously a distinction that requires more investigation at home, possibly with whipped cream and lots of it.

Tucked away in a side street we found some organic Mara des Bois, which I've already had with both crème fraîche and whipped cream (equally good).



There were chefs-in-training making strawberry concoctions for the crowd. And there was a gigantic tart for which each village of the commune contributed a section, but we didn't stay long enough to get a taste. Because unfortunately we were afflicted by the Curse of Vergt. Vergt is a nice enough village deep in the countryside, big enough to have an ATM and a few restaurants. But every time we go there, bad humor descends on all of us and we end up snapping, crying, arguing, snarling, and sulking and generally falling apart. How, you may ask, could anyone be in a bad mood when grown men are dressed up as strawberries?


When there are strawberry tarts to be eaten along with saucisse and frîtes with mayonnaise? I do not know. But we had to hurry home to get away from the Curse before somebody got hurt.