When Life Gives You Blackberries

Gram had a raspberry bush outside of the old, red, barn-like garage where my Grandpa kept his tools.  The bush was prickly with small thorns that scratched skin or grabbed clothing.  When we were small, my brothers and cousins and I would hide in it like rabbits.  Sometimes we picked handfuls of berries to sustain ourselves on those days when we would run away and build hideouts in the back field.  The bush was voracious and even sent small shoots through the thick walls of the garage and through cement cracks in the floor.  And the best part about this old bush was the fact that Gram makes the best raspberry jam in the world from its fruit. 

In my very early twenties, when I was beginning to explore the idea of spirit and the nature of the universe with that idealistic vision that one has in their very early twenties, I had a dream.  In the dream I came to a house or an apartment where a goddess lived.  She was tall and beautiful with long dark hair.  She wore no clothes, she needed none, she was luminous in her own light.  Plants grew in pots hanging from ceilings or along the hardwood floors.  Large wooden bookshelves held libraries of secret tomes that contained the innermost knowledge of the universe.  She invited me inside, and walked me past her bathroom where an Aries man showered and took me to a chair.  She told me she had a gift for me, something that would help me along my life journey.  She rummaged around and pulled out a dusty little wooden box.  When I opened it, I saw that it was full of tiny black grains.  With the wisdom that comes with dreaming, I knew these were blackberry seeds and that they were my gift.  These would help me and guide me along my journey. 

When I woke from the dream, I had to question every detail.  At that time, I had no experience with blackberries, and I wondered if I had meant to dream of Gram’s raspberries.  But no, the dream was what it was: they were blackberries. 

A year or so later, I moved west of the Cascade Mountains, and I met my Joseph, my Aries man.  He and I were hardcore hikers for a while and when we were exploring the back trails of our favorite hiking spot, we found a great sprawling bunch of blackberry bushes.  We picked a bunch and I made us a blackberry pie.  But we also decided that we needed to pick some more and try to make the blackberry wine that our friend, Carrie, encouraged us to try.  That was the first batch of many blackberry wines to come.  And when we moved into our current home, it was hardly surprising that most of the acres were covered with a twisted mess of blackberry vines. 

Unlike raspberries, Blackberry Vines don’t just scratch, they murder.  Their thorns grow thick as fingernails and reach into clothing and boots.  They invite you in with their dark, juicy berries.  You slide easily into their folds.  But as soon as you try to turn or move away from their centers, they have you, they hold you, the scratch you, they claw you.  But as this new place was going to be our little farmstead, and I was training to be a proper farmwife, I thought it was high time I learned to can and to make use of these sinister fruits.  Like knitting and cooking, this new aspect of wifely industry soon turned into a passion, and it wasn’t long before I was making jams and jellies from all the fruit growing on our new spread.  But blackberries were the first. 

My first batch, unfortunately, I burnt.  Joseph bought me a book: Blue Ribbon Preserves by Linda J. Amendt.  (I highly recommend the recipe Amendt gives for zucchini pickles.)  And Joseph bought the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.  Ball, that mason jar company, gave a recipe for making jam without pectin.  You just had to cook down the sugar and fruit until it jelled on its own.  Well, I soon found I didn’t have a feeling for it when that first batch had an undercurrent of charcoal.   I was speaking to Gram about this on the phone, all those years ago, and she gave me the best jam-making advice I’ve ever received.  She said to “just use the recipe on the box [of pectin].”  That’s when I found out that Gram’s raspberry jam wasn’t a secret she dug out of an old, leather-bound book of Grandmotherly secrets, but a real, easy, working recipe from a box of pectin.  And why not?  Farmwives know the value of easy.  Ever since that day I have used the recipe from the Ball box of Pectin, and my family loves my jams.  I would say that my blackberries are to me what Gram’s raspberries are to her: a medium for creating delicious art that comes out of the boiling-water canner looking likes jewels of garnet, amber, and rubies.  Blackberry is my signature jam.  (Joseph, however, disagrees with this.  He hates all the seeds in the jam, and prefers my apple and blackberry jelly.  Well, why not?  One can’t make the same preserve every time!) 

So I spent my morning this morning canning, and musing on my long history with blackberries.  Christmas is right around the corner, and homemade preserves make the best gifts! 

Barbie Project Runway 2011 challenge

This challenge was to create a look based on a fairytale.  Four of us took on the challenge: myself and my friends Jackie, Angela, and Judy. 

My look was based on the Little Mermaid.  At first I researched the latest trends of fall and came up with a design based on a skirt with a high slit and a cream colored top.  The textile I bought for the skirt had a scale pattern that reminded me of a golden coy fish in the ponds at Volunteer Park in Seattle.  But it came down to time, so I utilized the skirt material to make a mermaid dress.  Feathers were added to the train to create drama and to the hair for the “total look.” 

Angela’s look was based on Little Red Riding Hood.  Her look was the only one that utilized pants and a top.  The faux fur trim was reminiscent of the Big Bad Wolf.  And her cloak was draped in a modern way with  rich sequins creating drama. 

Judy’s look was inspired by Cinderella.  Using layers of tulle, Judy created a depth in blues.  Judy as a designer is meticulous and often utilizes small, intricate details.  True to her aesthetic, Judy applied rhinestones to the shoes to give the impression of glass slippers. 

Jackie created a look for a Lady of the Lake from an Irish folktale.  She layered aqua-greens together and draped them in such a way as to make the onlooker see flowing water.  Jackie also utilized copper wire to craft a crown of spirals for her model.

The votes were cast and Angela’s Red Hooded look was the winner of this challenge.  My look was out, as I was the only designer to receive zero votes.  I’ll have to step up my A-game for the up and coming, double-or-nothing Halloween challenge.  Stay tuned! 

The Color Issue

I must say that when it comes to color, I am obsessed.  My favorite color is usually “favorite color combinations” and always changes.  When I was little, my favorite color was unapologetically pink.  Quick on her feet, my mom told me the cool way for big kids at school to tell each other their favorite colors was to break it down into the primary colors that made it.  So kids who liked green, according to Mom, would say “my favorite color is yellow and blue.”  So for Kindergarten and most of first grade, I told everyone my favorite color was “red and white.”  But by second grade, the truth came out, and there are photographs of me on my “special day” wearing a pink construction paper crown with bold red letters saying “SPECIAL PERSON.”  It was in high school with its barrage of art classes, drama costume making, and graphic design when I discovered I loved color in all its hues, especially when it teamed up into schemes and themes. 

So, without further ado, I present a small sampling of the color in my life:

Red is the sunflowers growing in my garden.

Orange is the rowan berries growing on the trees that Joseph planted all over our yard because he knew rowan (Mountain Ash) was my favorite. 

Yellow is a sample of bowls tucked in the corner of one of my cupboards. 

Green is the shoe laces on my current kicks. 

Blue is my new Garden Gnome, Gnomeo. 

Purple is my new back pack. 

So do you think, with all this color in my life, I still might like “Red and White?” 

You tell me. 

Pancakes!

I love pancakes.  I ate them all through my childhood.  When my mom first became a wife at sixteen she memorized this recipe first and made it for the whole family whenever breakfast needed to be quick and hearty.

My Mom’s Pancakes aren’t her original recipe, she may have got it from Betty Crocker or from either of my grandmas.  I have it memorized, too.  It made me a hit with my friend Erika’s daughter when I used to go to their house early in the mornings to car pool.  The recipe is as follows:

Pancake Batter

1 cup flour (all purpose, white)

1 tablespoon sugar (white, granulated)

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large egg

¾ cup of milk

Mix the dry ingredients first and then add the wet.  Cook the batter on a hot griddle or in a waffle iron.  I usually add a little extra water or milk to the mix so they don’t get too puffy. 

I usually just make silver dollar sized pancakes, because that’s how Joseph likes them, but they can be made into any shape.  I used a cookie cutter to make a heart, but that is nothing compared to my mom.  She fully embraced life as a wife and mother and she applied all of her talents to the tasks.  So when she asked me what I wanted for my pancake I usually told her “Snow White” or “Cinderella.”  She would then take one of my story books, and would copy a picture of one of my favorite princesses in pancake batter using a little spoon (a technique I have yet to master).  After the outline had a chance to brown, she’d fill the rest of the picture in and when it was flipped over a perfectly princess-shaped flapjack was revealed!  I used to get frustrated with my Aunt Jenny because she could only achieve Pac-Man for me. 

You can eat them with syrup or fruit, but the true Frank and Frank’s Mom’s way goes as follows in this order: butter, peanut butter, and syrup.  Those are the best pancakes, and the peanut butter makes them good and hearty. 

Enjoy!

True Kitchen Confessions

Readers, you may remember those potatoes that I dug up while taming my garden-gone-wild. 

Well, something bad happened to them. We’ll get to that.

I should first admit to you that I am either a brilliant cook or a horrible one and it’s never in-between.  Something that drives me absolutely batty is that Joseph IS a good cook.   He might even be considered GREAT, but I would never tell him for fear it would inflate his already sizeable cooking ego.  Now, let me tell you something, Joseph cooks once, maybe twice a year, and has his domain over such delectable dinners as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  He might dust off his pots and pans for Easter, but that’s pushing it.  And these are also the times we have guests over so I get to hear things like:

“Oh, you are so lucky!”

“You must eat like this every day!”

“I wish my husband would cook like yours does!”

“How do you deserve a guy like this?  What did you do?”

Well, I got news for all of you: I cook 363 days out of the year.  Whenever we eat something, it comes from my pots and pans.  I am the one scrubbing my Dutch oven out after a meal.  I’m the one who does the thankless, no one cares cooking.  What?  No applause?  Well, don’t worry I’m used to it. 

The way I cook used to include recipes when I was younger.  My Gram gave me a copy of Betty Crocker, and I love it.  But I’m the kind of guy who thinks that I’ve got the idea after I’ve cooked something once or twice.  Sometimes this works out great.  For things like stews, I throw whatever I feel like into my trusty Dutch oven, and delicious things always come out (after  a stew or two that did not invite second helpings, I got the idea of what worked and what didn’t).  I also rarely experiment.  (Part of me not experimenting is that Joseph always finds experiments not-as-good as he would have done, thanks.  The other part is I am a tiny bit lazy and don’t like fixing things that aren’t broken.) 

So, back to my potatoes:

You’d think that a guy from Idaho would be able to peel potatoes in seconds flat, but I almost always cook them with the skins on and this is more out of that laziness we’ve discussed rather than a fondness for flavor.  You’d also think an Idahoan would be able to cook a potato …

Joseph wanted Potato Salad, and I thought that the first day of summer would be a great day for fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and a coconut cream pie for desert.  Don’t get excited, I bought the pie!  So I boiled the eggs, added the mayonnaise and the jar of sweet relish along with some other spices (I also am always throwing random spices into things, I can never leave well enough alone).  I boiled the garden potatoes.  I left the large ones alone and boiled the small ones whole.  Then I drained them, added the egg-mayo mixture, and mashed it all together.  It felt a little harder than usual, but that was fine.  Joseph criticizes my potato salad the most for being “mashed potato salad” and having none of the original potato shapes in it. 

Now for the taste test! 

*CRUNCH!!!*

Raw crunchy potatoes were peppered all through the salad.  Apparently the only potatoes that boiled properly were the big ones I cut into pieces.  All those little potatoes just sat in the hot tub and refused to cook. 

My Great Aunt Katie, one of my favorite people of all time, never served a broken egg in her kitchen, even if it meant that she threw away a half of a dozen.  She hated broken eggs: they were a disgrace.  Well, this potato salad was a disgrace and I couldn’t face Joseph’s smugly disgusted look when he bit into a raw potato.  So I went straight to the compost pile and got rid of the evidence. 

After I simmered down, I made batch number two from store-bought russets.  I was out of sweet relish so I had to use my last jar of homemade (thank you) bread-and-butter pickles that came from my very own, garden-grown zucchini.  I chopped these up coarsely to add textural interest … or maybe just because I’m lazy.  (I’m sensing a pattern here.)  I added a new egg-mayo mixture to the batch with a little salt, a little pepper, a little turmeric, and a liberal dash of garlic powder and I had a happy husband! 

I burnt the chicken, for reasons I may get into later … not my fault, I am having oven trouble!!! 

Joseph loved it.  When he got home on Tuesday, he was a hog in heaven.  And what was his favorite part of the whole meal?  Nope, not the potato salad: it was that damn gosh darn, store-bought pie!

Favorites

While I do enjoy bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things with you:

My friend Katie gave me these nesting dolls that are actually measuring cups!

Unicorns are my favorite animals.

Mason Jars come in very handy.

Sunflowers are one of my favorites in the garden.

And of course, Mermaids are my absolute favorite anything!

Idahome

I usually think that I will end up back in Idaho where I grew up.  I don’t know why I think this, as there are no immediate plans to get back there and I have plenty on my plate with career and school.  But there is this part of me that romanticizes living there in spite of the nine months out of the year chance of snow, the colorful rednecks that make living openly there difficult, and the overuse (on my part) of Wal-Mart. 

Joseph tells me he romanticizes living back in the swamps thanks to his new favorite television series, “Swamp People.”  I promise you now, that is NOT going to happen.

But when we have quite little trips out to visit the family, and see my little Idaho nephew, I get a nice sense that it would be a cabin in the woods, Joseph’s catch of the day in our skillet, and blue skies forever and ever. 

Somebody pinch me, I know I am dreaming!

(Joseph's catch of the day)