Tangential Tuesday, um, I mean Wednesday

Obsessions can be a healthy thing. At least that's what I tell myself every time I get wrapped up into some new possibility, some new restaurant, some new wine... or some new food. I think it's fair to say that each summer I begin anew my obsessions with everything ripe and growing on trees, vines, bushes or compost. Thus my previous posts on cherries and berries (which you know I'm just obsessed with because free is the greatest price to pay for a job-seeking former intern).

Right now my obsession has been turned to the ripening August blackberries that fall heavily from every thorny vine on every sunlit side street around here. It's totally obscene, the amount of blackberries you can pick in half an hour. The bushes are full of them into September, but the best ones are found right now, the first berries to turn that deep shade of magenta-purple-almost-black. The first ones are the biggest, and to me they taste the best, if only because after 11 long months you've forgotten just how divinely, deeply sweet they are. I can go out and pick forever, my hands moving back and forth from vine to bowl, just grazing the sharpest thorns and leaving track marks on my right forearm, evidence of the addict that I truly am. My bowl mounds higher and higher, until I realize that I have a cramp in my left thumb holding the plastic bowl, and I snap out of my juicy berry reverie.

I realize, as I'm picking, that this is women's work. I'm gathering food as women have for thousands of years. The guys can have their spearsh and they can go chase their wooly mammoths for fun for all I care. But this? This comes naturally to me, and I get the impression that it certainly doesn't to Mark. I must have asked him ten times before if he'd like to go picking, but he always replies in the negative. Of course, when I arrive home, he can't keep his hands from the purple mass of sweetness in my big red plastic picking bowl.

Blackberries, ounce for ounce, must be one of the most medicinal and nutritionally-dense foods that are readily available to us. They get their deep purple color from phytochemicals called anthocyanidins. These are potent antioxidants - similar to those in red wine - that can calm inflammation in the body. They also contain ellagic acid, a compound which is believed to be cancer-fighting. They are also high in fiber due to their seeds, and we could all use a little more fiber... come on.

Blackberries and raspberries, as well as other wild berry varieties like salmonberries and thimbleberries, are all consider caneberries. They all have long, thorny stalks or canes. What is really interesting about caneberries is that each berry that we consider a single fruit is actually a composite of sometimes 100 or more tiny 'fruitlets' each with its own seed. So each tiny fruit is actually a hundred little stone fruits! So cool.

I had so many blackberries this past week from obsessively stalking new bushes in the neighborhood that I had to cook them all down. I don't know quite yet if I'll leave the fruit for jam, or turn the sweet stuff into a few pies... or maybe both. Right now there is about a gallon of black-purple goo sitting in the fridge, waiting for something exciting to happen to it. For now, my morning toast will be excitement enough. Or maybe I'll turn a spoonful into yogurt, over vanilla ice cream, or heaped into a banana smoothie.

Blackberry Jam, Sauce, or Pie Filling (a very loose recipe by Chrissy Weiss)

Get a bunch of blackberries, picked while meditating on how life can be compared to this fruitful exercise (the good ones are always out of reach, to get the sweet you have to deal with the thorns, you never know what's hiding under the next leaf, etc.)

Bring them home and wash them (or don't).

Stop your significant other (most likely male) from eating the whole bowl.

Put them in a big pot and very slowly bring to a boil.

Turn down the heat to simmer, and stir.

Reduce the berries by cooking off the excess liquid... maybe reduced by 1/4 in volume. This could take some time depending on the amount of berries you're cookin'.

Add honey. Really, use honey. I promise you'll wilt to the floor with the results. Blackberries and honey were made for each other. Sweeten it to taste. Start with 1/4 cup per 3-4 cups of sauce in the pan and go from there.

Once you're happy with the sweetness, use cornstarch, arrowroot powder, or pectin to thicken. Again, you'll have to play with the amount, depending on how viscous your sauce is to begin with. Just remember that it thickens up very well after cooling.

Now eat it with a spoon (or not) and feel good that you're eating your afternoon's work.

A Weekend of Apples

These perilous days of September.  The sky too achingly blue, too clear, like blue bottle glass, the low angle of the sunlight giving warning.  This day may be the last, but tomorrow could be too.  We don’t know what will steal it away so quickly, or when or where we’ll feel it, but we know it’s coming.  The perilous days, more exciting to wake up to because we know they are so fragile.  Is this our last day of perfection?  Will it all be gone tomorrow?  It’s now or never.  We feverishly squeeze in our bike rides, our weekend trips, our plans to have friends over for dinner on the porch.  Between two jobs, the lazy days of summer I’ve worked all away– so I suppose these will be my lively days of September. 

The apples are here.  The blackberries are giving a mighty push to squeeze out the last of their fruit, and the plums have come and gone.  It seems just yesterday that Mark and I, laughing and jumping like kids, reached and climbed up into the trees to grab Rainier cherries.  But cherries are early summer, befitting for a plush bright fruit, sweet and colorful as sunshine, holding promise of the sweet and painted days to come. 

But apples, well they’re a much different story. 

I’ve been in denial about the summer being gone, protesting loudly like a frustrated toddler whenever Mark would muse on its passing.  “No, it’s NOT gone,” I’d say near tantrum.  But oh, now that the apples have come, I accept with solemnity and grace, much like the solemn apple itself. 

I pick them up from the ground, scattered around the baseball fields near our house.  I pick them up, one by one, as if they are the memories of summer days, fallen from the tree of August.  They are small, some ruddy and streaked with brown sunspots and others green on one side and rosy on the other.  They are smooth and warm from the sunshine.  They fit like worry stones in the palm of my hand.  I fill my sack, and then pluck the last of the blackberries from the bordering bushes, scratching my arms and staining my thumb and forefinger a magenta juice.  I work slowly, peacefully, with an inward-turning energy that appears only with the approach of Fall.

This will be the weekend of apples.  

Before our weekend trip, I take the apples and salvage what I can from their bruised and worm-eaten flesh.  They are sweet and tart.  I put them in a cast iron skillet skin-on along with the blackberries, add honey, butter and cook them into a rustic compote that we have for dessert over vanilla ice cream.  We then toss a few Granny Smiths, a Pink Lady and a Gala into our bag for the trip.  These will go with us, hiker-friendly food for September.

The next morning we drive north excited to camp and excited to trek for miles in nothing but wilderness.  The sun is shining.  Before long we hit the Skagit Valley, known for its abundance of just about everything – blueberries, strawberries, and yes, apples.  It was about lunchtime when I spotted the road sign ‘Tourist Activities’ which I typically ignore… but after those words was written ‘Winery.’  Sold.  Even if the wine wasn’t great, there would be a place to picnic and have sandwiches.  At the end of a long gravel drive, there was not only a winery, but another building with simple signage: Apples. 

Along with the sips of blackberry and apple wine, the pinot noir and the sangiovese, we bought apples - sour Gravensteins so tart they made my cheeks hurt.  But what we really wanted (and were so tempted to make off with when the owner’s back was turned) were these incredible Japanese dessert apples, called Akane.  They were growing on a single tree, right outside the door to the apple shed.  “That is the most photographed tree on the property” said the owner.  Well, if we couldn’t have a taste, we could have a picture, which surely is worth a thousand Mmmmm’s. 

So we will take a bite with our eyes, my friends, which we forget can be just as beautiful and rich as the taste experience itself.  

The apples disappeared from our backpacks, one by one, all weekend long.  They saw glaciers, mountain tops and waterfalls.  The trip was exhausting as we hiked for miles, all under those incredibly blue skies while suspending belief that these days would soon be gone. 

Hold fast with me, take a bite and savor a bit of September.