It’s the Berries!

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Raspberries…blackberries…blueberries…strawberries. Summer is berry season. Have you had your fill yet?

Nothing to pit or peel, naturally formed in perfect bite-size pieces, berries are the ultimate convenience fruit. Use berries as a topping for breakfast cereals or pancakes, in salads, and over ice cream or puddings.

For a simple dessert, mix berries with sugar to taste and let set for about half an hour, until they give up their juices to create their own sauce. Serve the sweetened berries with whipped cream, heavy cream, or yogurt.

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Strawberry Memories

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

I have a special place in my heart for strawberries. They are the prettiest of fruits, looking like juicy red Valentines. They’re packed with nutrition. And they figure into my early career in public relations.

One of my first accounts when I worked for a big PR agency was the California Strawberry Advisory Board (now the California Strawberry Commission). As the junior member on the account team, I executed a campaign in which America’s ten most wintery weary cities were celebrated with a flat of California strawberries sent to city mayors on the first day of spring. Flats were also sent to their local TV weathermen (no women at the time) and to the weathermen on national TV. This first campaign was so successful, it continued each spring for well past a decade.

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Summer Nights at the Bowl

By Andrew Hunter

Five years ago we celebrated our first Fourth of July in L.A. at the Hollywood Bowl and it quickly became our patriotic tradition. Every year we go to the iconic amphitheater, nestled in the beautiful Hollywood Hills, for the concert and fireworks. That fateful first year, as the crowd sang along to I Love L.A. with Randy Newman, we realized Los Angeles was going to be our home for years to come.

One of the fun things about The Bowl is you sit in boxes with tables and chairs, and are free to bring in picnic food, wine and any myriad of treats you can manage. This year, in the spirit of Yankee Doodle, the boys made Snickerdoodle Shortcake…fresh summer strawberries piled on Snickerdoodle cookies and topped with sweet whipped cream.

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Berry Season

By Katie Barreira

Happy June! For me, the next couple of months are all about the berries. Sure, you can get them year-round, but these finger-staining gems are entirely different animals in peak season. Not only are in-season berries at the height of juicy sweetness, they’re also much cheaper, so eat up!

One challenge with seasonal berries is that they are so perfectly ripe that they need to be eaten within a day a two. If you find yourself with ready-to-eat berries that you’re not quite able to polish off, don’t fret, just freeze!

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Extreme Food Styling

By Lori Powell

Last week, I was food styling on the North Fork of Long Island for a future Prevention magazine issue. Sounds glamorous, yes?

Well, not so much when you have brush fires raging a couple of blocks away and 40 MPH wind gusts. The fires were eventually put out, but not without destroying 1,000 acres and three homes.

The winds, on the other hand, kept on gusting so that anything that wasn’t tied down was flying through the air. Then came the rainstorms that blew through our shoot not once but twice…what’s next…locusts?

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