black + berry = delicious

I love blackberries. I love them a lot. I'd characterize it as more of a passionate, sparkling affair.

Vine-ripened, they are just about the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. They are summer, freedom, fun, giggling, adventure, end-of-a-hot-day sighs. Perfection.

Every summer (assuming I'm in the Northwest), I head out with my pails (typically a random assortment of plastic tubs). I dress in hardy clothing (if I don't, there will be blood). I wear tough shoes (again, with the blood). And then I pick. I pick a lot. Enough for pies and crisp, ice cream and breakfast (which is often crisp). I freeze it for later, and savor every bite. There is something about this amazing, weed-like vine (it grows like crazy out here!) offering nature's bounty that delights me to no end. If I don't make at least one blackberry crisp, I feel it as a loss.

Blackberry picking is the perfect combination of danger, tantalizing moments, sweetness, and effort. Danger because the thorny vines grab and poke and tear your skin (ask a friend who tried to wear shorts and sandals out picking with us last year). Tantalizing moments because the best, biggest, ripest berries are always just out of arms' reach. Sweetness, because, well, they're ripe berries. And effort for the hours of reaching, and narrowly escaping sharp thorns, for the hot sun, the little spiders, and the standing on tip toes or reaching from ladders. All of this is totally worth it.

This Labor Day weekend we (I had help) picked nearly 4 gallons of blackberries. We picked at a place I've been going since childhood, where the berries get so big that just two of them can fill your hand. I have to remind myself to eat them as I'm picking, because since the age of about 9 it occurred to me that if I didn't eat so many as I was picking, I'd have loads more to cook with and munch on later...

We made a cobbler. Then we made a crisp. We made vanilla ice cream to go with the crisp. We ate the crisp after dinner, and again for breakfast. It's delicious with yogurt. It's probably delicious with bacon and sandwiches.

My crisp recipe is one of the best. It has come from years of practice, having to make it up when I didn't have the recipe with me, adding more of this because we were out of that. It's best just out of the oven, when the crisp is still crispy and the berries still hot. It is a delectable combination of brown sugar, butter, old fashion oats, flour, and cinnamon. Sometimes I add nutmeg. With apple crisp I add a little bit of powdered ginger. With blackberries, I add almost no sugar to the berries themselves because the sweet topping and the sweet-tart flavor of the berries is the perfect combination.

After our picking extravaganza, I lugged a giant plastic bag of berries home with me and it is sitting in our fridge, taunting me with its potential. I put blackberries in my breakfast this morning. Tonight I might make jam.

photo credits:

Blackberry Crisp

Tiny crisp

Fresh Blackberries

dig in

The Epicurean gods guided my hands yesterday as I hunted through our cupboards and that bottom drawer in the fridge. I can show no false modesty, I'm too excited! What emerged from this rather random assortment of vegetables and foodstuffs was a delicious, satisfying meal. It is vegetarian but full of protein and has a nice balance of textures. I'm calling it (for lack of any further inspiration) "white bean and cabbage salad with lime-yogurt dressing."

Here's the recipe in case you're interested. We made about half this much for two people, and had enough leftovers for my lunch today. Delicious! I hope you think so, too.

White Bean and Cabbage Salad

w/ lime-yogurt dressing

In a large mixing bowl combine:

1/2 head green cabbage (sliced thin like slaw)

1 12oz can black olives (chopped smallish)

1 12oz white Northern beans (rinsed, high in protein)

1/4 bunch (or to taste) chopped cilantro

2-3 leaves kale, chopped super thin (adds iron, fiber)

1-2 limes, juiced (start with one, to taste)

1/2 c. plain, lowfat yogurt (Greek style if desired, adds protein)

8-10 slices jar/mexi style jalapenos, diced tiny (to taste)

Enjoy! And I apologize for the photo, it is not what you would call "professional" or "good." I would have liked to rearrange the cabbage a little to reflect a more chic cabbage presence, but it said no.

electrochef

I love to cook. Sometimes just pizza with interesting vegetables on top (steamed cauliflower is surprisingly delicious!) and sometimes I like to experiment. I've played with truffle oil, aged balsamic vinegar, used blueberries as a garnish for baked chicken, and added green chiles to seared, sliced polenta. I discovered that cooking without salt lets out a whole spectrum of new flavors (and I looooove salt!).

After years of cooking on gas stoves, I've been learning to cook on electric. It was not a delightful beginning (you mean I have to figure out how hot Medium is, I can't just look at how high the flames are?!), but after some weeks or months (I'll not be telling you exactly how long) I've finally gotten the hang of it. Water continues to boil on my 1970's stove top just below Medium, Warm means Hot, and High means "I'm coming to kill whatever it is you're trying to cook."

I've cooked in restaurants using exotic 12-burner tops and even one-burner camping stoves, learning from great chefs who taught me some of their secrets. One thing I learned was to deviate from the recipe and try an extra pinch of this or that, to use the recipe as a guideline but mostly as an inspiration for new culinary creations. This can come in handy when you happen to be missing one or two ingredients...

And so I come to the point:

In life, it's easy to follow what's written down and make something delicious. What's not so easy is when we encounter something missing, such as a key ingredient and are still expected to have something edible and perhaps even wonderful in the end. I like to think that as I look back on all the meals I've shared, that I can sit happy knowing I made the most delicious dish I could with what I was given, and with what I happened to find sitting around in the bottom drawer of my fridge.