Do You Know a Leaper?

No, not a Leper, although there are fewer and fewer people termed 'leper' with the availability of today's medical treatments. A Leaper is a person born on February 29th.

Today's local paper had a feature story on a woman who will be having a baby, by C-section. She has chosen to have the birth take place tomorrow, Leap Day. I guess that means that once every 4 years her child with have a very large birthday party. Most Leapers celebrate their other birthdays on February 28th.

Interesting facts for individuals born on February 29th.
1) Most life insurance companies computers cannot accept a birthdate of February 29th. Leapers have to put their application birthdate as March 1st.

2) There is no excuse for not knowing when a U.S. Presidential election is to be held because they are always held in Leap Years.

3) Signing a one year contract on February 29th means that it expires when, February 28th or March 1st of the following year?

4) There is an Irish tradition that says if a man receives a proposal of marriage on February 29th, he must accept it.

I titled this blog entry, Do You Know a Leaper. While I have 6 close family members with February birthdays, I personally do not know a Leaper. Here are a few famous people who were born on February 29th.

• 1468 – Pope Paul III (d. 1549)
• 1792 – Gioacchino Rossini, Italian composer (William Tell, The Barber of Seville) (d. 1868)
• 1896 – Morarji Desai, former Indian prime minister (d. 1995)
• 1916 – Dinah Shore, American singer (d. 1994)
• 1924 – Al Rosen, American baseball player
• 1924 – Carlos Humberto Romero, former president of El Salvador
• 1960 – Anthony (Tony) Robbins, American motivational speaker

If you are lucky enough, or unlucky enough as is thought in Scotland, to be born on February 29th, I hope you have a very Happy Birthday tomorrow.

So good, I had to repeat it!

We are at the height of Strawberry Season here in Florida. The Plant City Strawberry Festival will be starting in just a few weeks, and Strawberry Shortcake is on the dessert menu of nearly every restaurant in town.

I put this Strawberry Tart recipe on our blog last year but it is so good, it is worth reposting it.

I hope you enjoy the quick, easy and delicious results!

Easy Strawberry Tarts

Use your favorite pastry recipe for the tart shells or buy frozen tart shells at the grocery store.

Ingredients:

1 small package of French Vanilla Instant Pudding

1 ½ c. whole milk

1 c. whipping or heavy cream

¼ c. confectioners sugar

1 pt. of strawberries

Wash, hull, and slice strawberries in half.

Follow directions on pudding package to make the French Vanilla Instant pudding using 1 ½ c. of whole milk instead of 2 cups.

In separate bowl, beat the whipping cream until light and fluffy. Add ¼.c of confectioners sugar slowly, and continue beating until it holds soft peaks.

Fold ½ of the whipped cream into the pudding mixture, and divide between 4 – 6 tart shells (depending on the size of each tart). Top each tart with several sliced strawberries arranged decoratively. Add a dollop of whipped cream to each.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve

Valentine's Day Thanks to Driscoll's

Our strawberry supplier, Driscoll's has once again provided Flowers to Eat with the freshest, sweetest strawberries for the busiest single day of the year. While our undipped fruit bouquets are very popular on this day, we create almost twice as many chocolate covered strawberry arrangements for Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is hands down the single busiest day of the year for fruit arrangement companies. We need our fruit and chocolate suppliers to be flexible and reliable in meeting last minute additions to our usual orders. Thanks to our suppliers and our terrific in-store team, Flowers to Eat was able to dip, decorate, assemble, and deliver 100% of our customers' orders on time, on this super-busy day.

Driscoll's has been the primary supplier of the berries that enable our customers to 'See and Taste the Difference' in the Flowers to Eat product line. And we want to publicly thank them for the excellent product and service that we have received from them over the years.

Thank You Driscoll's!