I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grandparents. I’ve seen both financial and food advice that says, basically, just act more like your grandparents and you’ll be OK. The Cheapskate Blog advises people to save up for big-ticket items. In the food realm, I believe it was Michael Pollan who advises eating more like one’s grandparents (though it’s been a while since I read it… it might have been Mark Bittman). In some cases, he notes, even our grandparents have forgotten how to eat, thanks to such “innovations” as Wonder Bread.
Some of my earliest memories are foraging with my grandmother in rural North Carolina. We would collect persimmons from her prized tree, and turnips, radishes, beets and cabbages from the garden. My favorite time of year was the hottest days of summer, when we would walk about a half mile down our dirt road (nope, not a street) to pick the biggest, juiciest blackberries on Earth. Or maybe they just taste that way when eaten straight from the briar patch. We would head home with purple fingers and teeth and a multitude of scratches and welts thanks to the thorns and chiggers. And then my grandma would bake pies. The best blackberry pies ever made (and nothing will ever change my mind about that).
My grandmother also made real Southern food. She percolated coffee every morning for the boys, and for the red-eye gravy with country ham (sheer artery-clogging bliss). And she made biscuits every single day. I don’t know how many times I watched her make them. No measuring or tools. Just a big bowl, flour, buttermilk and lard (although I believe she did eventually switch to Crisco, perhaps for no other reason than the canisters, once emptied, made convenient spittoons). She mixed the biscuits with her hands while talking to anyone who would listen about whatever the neighbors "down yonder" were up to, or, if the neighbors had been too upstanding recently, she would tell dirty jokes in a stage whisper.
Now I live in Maryland, in suburbia. I have a blackberry bush in my back yard, just planted this May. So far it has one single berry. I suppose it will never live up to my childhood memories—does anything, ever?—but I did see some promising wild blackberries on my running trail the other day. Here’s to hoping the neighbors don’t mistake them for raspberries and pick them red (yep, that happened last time we had what looked like a promising crop). Maybe I’ll actually beat the Japanese beetles to some wild blackberries this year. I’ll eat some straight from the bush and think of my grandmother. They don’t make ‘em like her any more.
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