apples and berries

So, we're sitting at the dinner table last night, Drew and I. I have served Drew a gourmet, carefully hand-crafted meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and applesauce.

Drew is munching away when he turns to me and says, contemplatively, "Applesauce. That's a funny word."

"Um, yes, it is sort of funny," I say, trying not to laugh.

"Yes, Mama," he responds seriously. Then he tells me that his applesauce has "turned yucky." Completely out of the blue! One second it's perfectly delicious, albeit amusingly labeled, and then, suddenly, it's inedible.

I add a sprinkle of cinnamon to the top of it, which apparently makes it palatable again.

"It not yucky now!" Drew says, excitedly.

Saturday morning, we drove a few miles down the road to The Happy Berry farm, where we picked blueberries.

Charles, who grew up in this area, said actually paying for the berries we picked was a new experience for him, since, as a child, he and his friends simply snuck through the woods and stuffed their faces for free.

"I'll thank you not to expose our innocent young son to your outlaw past," said I.

Drew took his berry picking very seriously. The farm owners will tell you that a certain amount of "grazing" from the bushes is expected, even encouraged, during picking. But Drew was having none of it.

"Berries go in the basket. IN THE BASKET!" he would say when we tried to entice him to try one. Obviously, he will not be following in the thieving steps of his father.

 

Also, despite the almost-100-degree weather, Drew declined to be picked up and carried, nor would he allow us to carry the basket for him for longer than a minute or two.

"I walk by MYSELF. I carry basket MYSELF."

We finally convinced him to sit in the shade and rest, although he continued to pick berries even while sitting.

 

When we returned to the farmhouse to weigh in our berries, it was a struggle to get him to sit down and drink some water.

After his nap, we let him help us make blueberry muffins and blueberry-lemon bread. The bread turned out quite yummy. The muffins, however, did not, although our greyhound Simon quite enjoyed them. Who knew that white corn meal would taste so different from yellow corn meal? The recipe called for yellow, but I didn't have yellow. I had white. It's only a minor color difference, right?

Basically I ended up with blueberry cornbread, shaped like muffins. They look great. I mean, seriously great. Fluffy, oozing with plump blue fruit, lightly browned on top...they should have tasted divine.  But they tasted like cornbread, which, while not a bad taste, is not a sweet, soft, delicate, melt-in-your-mouth taste. Cornbread tastes like roughage - like practical, stick-to-your-ribs breakfast food. Muffins taste like buttery sin on a plate.

But did I mention the bread was good?