Every year I tell myself I will be sensible about strawberry season. I will buy a reasonable quantity of strawberries. I will eat them fresh, perhaps with a little cream, and I will not spend an entire weekend making jam. Every year I am not sensible at all.

The problem is that strawberries are only perfect for about two weeks. Before that they are pale and hard and taste of nothing. After that they are soft and overripe and beginning to turn. But in those two weeks — those glorious, fleeting two weeks — they are the most beautiful thing in the world, and I cannot help myself.

I go to the farm stand and I buy far too many. I bring them home and I wash them and hull them and eat several standing at the kitchen counter, because I cannot wait. Then I make jam. I make a lot of jam. I make more jam than any reasonable person needs, and I give it away to everyone I know, and I still have too much.

The jam-making process is one of my favorite things. The kitchen fills with steam and the smell of hot sugar and strawberries, which is one of the best smells in the world. The jars line up on the counter, glowing red in the afternoon light. There is something deeply satisfying about putting up food — about taking something perishable and making it last.

In January, when it is cold and grey and the farmers' market is full of root vegetables and nothing else, I open a jar of strawberry jam and spread it on toast and it tastes like summer. It tastes like those two perfect weeks. It tastes like standing at the kitchen counter eating strawberries before I could wait any longer.

That is why I am not sensible about strawberry season. That is why I never will be.