Rediscovering the Taste of Strawberries
HAVANA TIMES – Eating strawberries is quite an ordinary experience for the average Brazilian. They’re sold on almost every corner, in any market, and a 250-gram tray costs between 7 and 10 reais (about a dollar and a half).
These are strawberries grown in the country.
For a Cuban immigrant like me, strawberries are often an unfulfilled desire, because in Cuba, they’re practically nonexistent. I understand that they are produced in some colder regions of the island with microclimates, but Cubans (almost) never see them.
The last time I ate them in Cuba was before the pandemic, when the MLC (magnetic dollar) stores still offered some interesting products. We bought a frozen pack, I can’t recall the price, but I do remember it was quite expensive for our budget.
We came home eager to make a delicious smoothie amid that radioactive heat, but we were disappointed. That drink barely tasted like strawberries. It was more like bland milk.
When we arrived in Brazil, although at first our budget only allowed for basic groceries, one day we bought one of those little trays that are sold everywhere.
My secret hope was to relive the flavor of the ice cream they used to sell in my neighborhood during the 1980s—ice cream that even had bits of strawberry in it. However, once again, I was disappointed, and I began to think maybe my memory was playing tricks on me, that maybe the taste I remembered didn’t really exist.
But this past Sunday, a Brazilian friend invited us to visit a region southwest of Curitiba where strawberries are grown. It’s the municipality of Araucaria, a region that belongs to the city but is geographically located outside its limits, about 15 kms from where I live.
Araucaria has a small town I had already visited, and appreciated its clean air and peaceful atmosphere, though this time we didn’t go to the town itself, but rather to the countryside, where they sell strawberries.
The car ride was long. We talked about what we want to do with our lives and also enjoyed the beautiful scenery, where soybean and corn crops decorate the fields in yellowish tones.
We also visited some interesting places established by the Polish community that founded the town.
Then we arrived at the place where the strawberries are sold. A kilo of frozen strawberries was 12 reais (about two dollars), and a kilo of fresh strawberries—which you can pick yourself from the garden beds—was 20 reais (around three and a half dollars).
We tried the fresh strawberries and they were delicious. You just wanted to keep eating more and more. They were surprisingly sweet while still keeping that signature tartness. We bought two kilos of frozen strawberries to make smoothies at home.
When we got home, we made strawberry smoothies. I feared another frustrating experience. I had already started to think humanity had an unjustified fetish with strawberries, but this time was different. That childhood taste “orgasm” returned the moment I sipped the drink.
Then many things in my mind began to fall into place.