Have You Met My Sisters? I Have A Bunch!

In between scoping out the Democratic National Convention and keeping up with headlines from the Republican camp, I've been busy organizing my bookshelves and files. And I came across everyone's highschool graduation photos--check it out!

That's my oldest sister above. Even in high school, she was just SO sophisticated! I always thought she'd marry the President or something. Or have a TV show. About marrying the President. Or maybe a show about having an identical cousin move in and the ensuing hijinks. I would SO watch either one of those! I love hijinks, don't you?

Oh, gosh. Remember long hair? I mean, LONG hair? Shining, beautiful, down to there hair? Yeah, this is one of the younger girls. One time she got asked out on a date by one of the Bush boys but she was too busy ironing her hair to take the call. She's not sorry though--says she could never spend her days wearing a red pantsuit and matching lipstick. There's a contract First Ladies have to sign about that, you know!

Don't you love this sister? Gee, she's always been a sweetheart. I remember helping her set her hair with pink sponge rollers and Dippity Do. She's a neat lady, now. Tons of fun. Don't get her started on Hillary, though! They were roomies at Wellesley and to this day have their own secret language. I can't read it but I found this note and am wondering if you can decipher it..."ouryay urntay ithway illbay omorrowtay, okayay?"

Oh, and this is another one of the older girls.. She studied hard and got such good grades. She got her ya-ya's out by throwing a few elbows on the college basketball court and was runner-up in a couple of beauty pageants! Wow! She's always had a dream of moving up to Alaska, and getting tapped to be V.P. by an old white guy with no grip on reality! Ha ha ha! Guess she's a little nutty, isn't she?

And here's our glamour puss. Rrrrwr! Crew neck sweater with no dickey underneath--what a hottie! She ran around with the fast crowd. And she's practically famous, you know! She ended up, um, *cough*, dating some Secret Service guy. Who worked for the President. She can't remember his name, but she says he had a really nice gun!

What an amazing set of sisters, huh? And, gee, politics just seem to come naturally to us!

Hey, I'm just kidding about all this. I do have lots of sisters but none of them ever had such egregiously bad hair in high school. And be sure to check out Facebook Yourself!

One, Two, Three, Four...

When we lived in Florida so many years ago we liked to drive over to Cape Canaveral and try to watch satellites get launched. Except it was tricky, because there was always a chance of bad weather complicating the launch or the scheduled re-entry. Usually we'd get to Cocoa Beach and check-in to the cramped beachside Holiday Inn with our smuggled schnauzer and go eat pancakes at IHOP. Then, bloated and high on syrup, we'd return to the launch area only to receive news that the mission had been scrubbed. Because a storm had been sighted off the coast of Africa. And I was so ignorant that I was all "Africa? But it's so far away! Why do we care about Africa? NASA is making excuses and they are LAME! And this Holiday Inn sucks and my stomach hurts and why are we traveling with this smelly animal?"

But here's how it works--look at the way storms form off the east coast of Africa and just line up, ready to swell into tropical disturbances, then storms, then hurricanes. That image is just textbook hurricane season and guys, it is going to be a doozy.

Notes

First of all--Barack Obama's speech was everything we knew it would be. Insightful, passionate and just so interesting. Apparantly Senator Obama talked for nearly an hour, but I think most of us sat absolutey transfixed, unaware of time, drinking in the brillliant narrative of his speech, a narrative that was steeped in firm reality yes, absolutely, but drenched in something else as well, something light and bright... something that made you feel you were a child and it's summer time and you have an entire stack of books from the library to read plus a bag of peanut M&M's mixed with red hot cinnamon jelly beans sitting right by your side. It's something beautiful, something akin to magic. What's the word for it--what is it....oh, my god, is this what you all mean by hope? Jesus. Well, I'm just overwhelmed. Give me a hanky will you? I've got to dry these tears of joy from my eyes and then wipe all this candy off my fingers. That librarian is going to kill me.

Congratulations to all of us for bringing this candidate so far!

Second--Sarah Palin? HA HA HA HA! Good, one, McCain! Thank you for setting that one up. Because we all would feel so comfortable having our second-in-command be a person who was, until two years ago the mayor of a small town in Alaska. Oh, God. You Republicans. I love the way you second-guess us all. "Yeah, all those women who supported a Liberal, Democratic candidate will flock to my ticket now! Look! I have a woman on the ticket! What's that you say? She's a conservative with NO experience on the national scene? Aw, who cares? She's a girl! "

Ha ha ha!

Hi

"Oh, sorry. Did I scare you? Because that's not why I was standing here right outside your door. No. I really didn't want to make you scream in terror and fall down with your heart beating so hard it felt as it were trying to escape from your chest. Woo boy! I'd give you a hand back up from the floor but as you can see they're glued to my sides here. You gonna be okay, buddy? Gee, I apologise for freaking you out. Just, y'know, wanted to say, HI!"

Heh. Summer's winding down and I think maybe to distract us all from the transition of hot summer days and sleeping late this week to the imminent and horrible business of adhering to a schedule next week, we've been busy setting this three-foot tall cardboard cut-out of Mini-Me* outside each other's bedrooms. We've set him up about ten times now and yet the shock of encountering his dire expression as you stagger half-awake towards the bathroom has not lessened for any of us. He's just so intense and...small.

*Whlle biking down an alley One of us found him sitting out on top of some trash. And I am happy to report we weren't too proud to stick his little cardboard frame under our arm and pedal home.

This Ain't No Beach Volleyball Game

Comparisons are odious, I know that. But does anyone else think that the Democratic National Convention suffered by showing up on TV in such close proximity to the Beijing Summer Olympics? I mean, I'm a total CNN junkie and even I was chafing with ennui as the hours toiled by, as Wolf Blitzer tried in vain over and over either to hype the upcoming speeches or to insighfully parse those already delivered. Hmm. Perhaps we'd all gotten used to the exhilirating gold medal promise of our athletes who not only brought the glamour of youthful sex appeal but actually prevailed on the courts and in the pools. We win! We win again! It was all so heady. It was good to be an American at the 2008 Games.

And then last night rolled around and what did we have to look at when the camera panned over the crowd at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver? Hordes of goofy middle-age politicos were either sweating in their red-white-and-blue-designed-to-catch-the-media's-eye-costumes or self-consciously swaying to the embarrassingly dumbed-down beat provided by a house band playing Muzak-style Hits of the Eighties. "Sweeeeeeeeeeet Caroline" blared out of the speakers as Caroline Kennedy advanced to the podium to introduce her Uncle Teddy. (True story, I saw her shudder as she recognised the tune. God, she had to deal with a lot of b.s. last night. But she was really cool. Oh, did anyone else catch her post-mortem smack-down of Wolfie when he asked--repeatedly-- for a "step-by-step walk-through" of just how the Obama campaign decided not to consider Senator Clinton for VP? Caroline laughed in his face. Wow.)

Anyway, maybe we would have been easier in our expectations of the first night of the convention if we hadn't just been treated to the seventeen days of pagentry and brand-new shiny venues and all those rippling muscles in tiny tight suits. I know I could certainly have used a little down time, a little help with the re-entry to the pace of political coverage. I only wish the DNC organizers had had some coaching from the Chinese governement or something. Instead of the delegates milling about so aimlessly they could have entered the arena and immediately formed themselves into a map of the USA. Then set off fireworks. Then rolled around the floor with freaky huge white boxes in a confusing display of revisionist history. Then replaced one of the Obama children with a smaller, cuter version--you know, that oldest girl has gotten a little bit too tall and grown-up, a tinier version would elicit more of the adorable vote from those PUMAs, I'm pretty sure about that...

I don't think I'll tune in for the DNC coverage tonight. I've heard that it's possible to download the Olympic gold medal table tennis match from NBC.com. Either that or I'll rewatch the Bulgarian Men kick ass in the Water Polo Finals. 'Cause I don't think the sight of Chelsea Clinton coyly introducing her mom (um, I already know who Hillary is, by the way...) can possibly compete with brawny, mustachioed Eastern European men wearing red and white checkered bonnets demurely tied under their chins.

Sorry, C.C. It's really just all about the showmanship.

Look Closely...

Closer...closer...yes! It's a GOPHER! Millking a cow who just happens to be dressed up like a pioneer girl. This fantastic sculpture is carved from the remains of an old tree and it sits on the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair all year long, just waiting for State Fair go-ers to wander by, gasp in horror and then choke on their mini-donuts. And I think that it tells you everything you need to know about this state's mentality.

Summer Dinner Menu

Summer Eggplant with Two Sauces
Summer Arugula Salad
Bread
Summer Peach Galette or Blueberry Pie

Summer Eggplant
Peel one large eggplant and cut into thin slices. Place slices flat on paper towels and salt lightly, let sit for half an hour. Turn each slice over and repeat the process. Blot moisture from eggplant slices and dust with flour, then dip in beaten egg. Fry in olive oil until tender and lightly brown on each side, drain on paper towels.

To make Fresh Tomato Sauce, remove core from six medium tomatoes, cut in half crosswise and squeeze gently to remove seeds. Cut each half into small dice. Mince one or two cloves of garlic and saute in two or three tablespoons of butter, add diced tomatoes and cook over low heat for approximately ten minutes. Add a sprig of fresh basil or oregano and continue cooking for ten or fifteen minutes. Add salt and pepper.

For Basil Pesto--place two cups loosely packed basil leaves in a food processor, add two large cloves of roughly chopped garlic and pulse to combine. Add one third cup of olive oil, one half teaspoon salt, puree mixture. Add one third cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, combine briefly. Add one or two more tablespoons of olive oil if needed--pesto should be smooth and not too stiff.


To finish eggplant dish-arrange fried slices in a single layer on a baking sheet and crumble one tablespoon of French or Israeli feta cheese over each round. Place briefly in a hot oven or under broiler until cheese is warm and slightly melted, it is not necessary to brown. (This step can also be done in a microwave--heat two or three slices at a time on high for thirty seconds.)



Drizzle with Basil Pesto and serve with Fresh Tomato Sauce.



To make Summer Arugula Salad you will need:

Three or four large handfuls arugula

Juice from one lime
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp stone ground mustard

One ripe peach, cut into thin slices
One half cucumber, peeled and seeded, cut into thin slices
One jalapeno pepper, cut into thin slices (optional)

Mix together lime juice, olive oil and mustard. Add salt and pepper.

Place remaining salad elements in bowl, add dressing and toss gently.

Crust for galette

one stick cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup ice water
1 tsp vanilla

3 ripe peaches

Mix flour, sugar and salt together in mixing bowl. Cut the butter into the flour mix, until the pieces are roughly the size of lentils. Add the vanilla to the ice water, remove ice and add water to ingredients in bowl. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until dough comes together. Flatten into disk and chill, wrapped, while you prepare the peaches.

Cut peaches in half, remove pits. Cut each half into eighths. Mix with 1/3 cup sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

Roll dough into large circle and place on round baking sheet. Arrange peach slices in single layer on dough, leaving a two inch border. Fold border in over peaches, and bake in a 375 degree oven for 35-45 minutes.

Um, Did You Get a Phone Number?*

Below is a "message" I found scrawled on a piece of scrap paper next to the telephone on my desk:

fhemly?
shrmely?
called dad!

What... IS... this? I asked the teenage perpetrator of this incompetence. WHAT... is this? What is ...THIS? C'mon, buddy, what the hell? I mean, why even bother finding a writing utensil and going to the trouble of wedging the phone against your shoulder while you scribble this bit of silliness down where your Mom--not your Dad, by the way-- will see it?


The perp's response was, not surprisingly, something along the lines of:

Vernik?
Fustith!

I thought about this strange episode and thought some more. And I came to a realization that there was something pure and even beautiful about it all. You see--the teen perp truly believed in the possibility that I Could Make Sense of Gibberish From His Brain. Because sometimes? I can.


*Yeah, here it is... &%#-*##@^

When Nature Gets Tricky

See the photo below? The arms and hands entwined in a sisterly way? Pretty, isn't it? And interesting, too, in its arrangment of form and strong focus on direction, the subtle use of texture...yes, yes, quite artistic! Actually, what we're looking at is a walking stick, one of those amazing insects that look exactly like a twig. Those two sets of arms you see belong to the little girls at the cabin we just visited--they spied the walking stick clinging to the wood siding and allowed it to clamber over their hand, arms, shoulders, backs and although pretty scared at the prospect, their hair!

Thank you, girls! That was the first walking stick I've ever met face to face. The coolest thing about it was-- the head and antennae parts of its body were pale green, to simulate new twig growth. Clever!

click to enlarge!

little bit more in focus!

In Which I Am Intolerant

I'm leaving in a couple of minutes--going on a little road trip over to Wisconsin. Yep. About two hours drive through farmland and big sky country in order to sit around at a lake cabin. Then we'll eat a hamburger and drive home. I am really excited about this. But I just realised that I've never apprised you all of something--I am a hat bigot. Yes. I have gigantic issues with adults who wear fun or cute things on their heads. Such as driving hats. Or berets. Or bandanas. Or newsboy caps. For no reason. College kids and under, fine. Put whatever piece of idiocy you want to on your head. Knock yourself out. The rest of you? Cut it out. You look stupid and that makes me angry.

Be back soon!

Adieu, Wafer

The Nurse, The Undertaker and The Gravedigger

When the hour finally came yesterday --and I knew it would, I'd been on death watch since early morning--these three stepped up and took over. The Nurse, who had been diligently stopping by to offer sips of fresh water, called me into the room when Wafer, our seven-year-old pet rabbit, became suddenly agitated. Wafer calmed immediately when I spoke to her, breathed evenly as I rubbed her cheeks and stroked between her soft ears and held her limbs secure against her body. After five minutes she gave a quick spasm and then I saw darkness enter the eye that had been looking up at me. But for her last moments of life I was there petting her and telling her it was okay and Nurse? I am so very grateful for that.

The Undertaker brought what I think of as a bit of Shakespearian comedy to our little tragedy when he broke out in laughter at the solemn moment of transfering Wafer's always well-fed form to a large (women's sixe 11) shoebox. Which was not large enough. If only he had recently purchased shoes, we all agreed. Men's size 13 undoubtedly would have been perfect for her.

The Gravedigger took her job seriously--dig deeper, she commanded. Make the bottom of the hole wide and level she urged. The Undertaker railed slightly at the directives but rallied to her mission. He himself thoughtfully arranged Wafer's bed for the everafter, made up of fresh pine chips complete with a pillow of sweet Timothy hay.

The Nurse dug up one of Wafer's favorite bitter lettuce plants and knelt to plant it in the freshly turned earth atop her grave. The Gravedigger used her feet to tamp down the soil. The Undertaker asked her to stop stepping on the grave. The Nurse rolled her eyes, but conscious of my raw emotion and the delicacy of the situation, for once declined to comment on the antics of the shovel wielders.

Thank you, dear children. Your response to a call for assistance that I didn't even have to issue was quick, efficient and compassionate. And as always, you made me laugh. What would I have done without you?

Note to Self: Bring Camera

I've gone places and seen things these past few days and I am thinking I may need to start carrying my camera along with me. I've missed so many photos. Number one-- I really want to show you the plate-size blueberry cornmeal pancake (vegan!) I had for breakfast the other day. I've looked around on the Internet and I've seen lots of photos showing stacks of good-looking cornmeal cakes with the requisite oozing blueberries. They are all very similar to the one I ate. But... not quite! Mine was just one single cake, enormous and pan-freckled, hanging over the edge of the dinner plate. And since it was vegan, there wasn't a pat of sweet butter melting into the hot blueberries. Nope, no pot of whipped cream either. Just a tiny metal cream pitcher filled to the top with the truest maple syrup, set right onto the center of the pancake. Yeah, it made a dent.



And sure, I can easily find photos that show cattails growing near the shore of a little lake. But I'll never find any that show the ones I saw yesterday-- amazing whoppers, each one big as an ear of sweet corn wrapped up in brown velvet, supported by thick sharp-edged green stalks. Plus, these cattails? They were wearing jewelery. Seriously--a single slender greeny-brown grasshopper was poised on almost every cattail, tiny feet sunk into the deep cushiony fabric of the flowering cylinder. I'm not usually a fan of brooches--who is?--but those cattails really made it work.

I have regrets about all this, it's true. We can never recreate those shots, those moments. But I was lucky because besides at least getting to tell you about my a little bit about my breakfast and my afternoon spent relaxing at that small lake, I can tell you that that pancake (made and served to me by the good hippies at one of our more successful Urban Organic Bakery and Cafes), not only tasted really delicious, I truly felt good after I ate it. No sleepiness, no feeling of overfullness. Score one for the vegans! And although it may be the maple syrup talking--I procured a second tiny pitcher--I have to say I really love my city. I love the neighborhoods with sidewalks and skinny trees on skimpy boulevards, and old narrow houses and buses roaring down the street. I am so happy to be where people can walk to a restaurant. And it cracks me up that I could have a server with such a lovely, kind manner (and adorable floppy bangs!) that I notice those things and forget to assign a gender to him or her.

And those cattails? I spent more than two hours staring at them. While simultaneoulsy being awed that I got to see schools of intricately designed tiny black bullheads churning around in the warm shallows while a dozen of those graceful, aggressive barn swallows (only if they live under a swimming dock I think they get to be dock swallows) swooped across the water. So. Turns out spending an August afternoon sitting next to a quiet pond where herons nest and lily pads flourish is my other favorite thing in the world. Who knew?

But dang. Wish I'd brought my camera.

Vet Training 101?

The family of a good friend of my fifteen-year-old son's got a new puppy, a Bermese Mountain Dog. She's going to be an enormous creature--at three or four months she already weighs over forty pounds and is knee-high to her owner, who is six-feet four. She is a gorgeous animal--all clean and shiny brown and black and white fur, plus a happy nature and sweet breath. And her paws--they're absolutley huge puppy paws, warm and delicate and giant. Like big fresh-baked muffins.

All that infant canine deliciousness didn't make the following conversation any less disturbing:

"Oh, Mom, the Bellamey's puppy had a hemorrhoid the other day and they told me to just push it back in."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, I didn't want to--but I was playing with her and they said, oh, just push it back in! so I did. It was SO freaky!"

"Sweetie, no one can make you do something like that if you don't want to, okay?


"Yeah, I guess--but it was sticking out of her stomach and I guess it happens all the time..."


*******

"Honey, you know you said HEMORRHOID, right? You actually mean HERNIA."


"Oh! Yeah, a HERNIA. I had to push it back in. It was sticking out and they said--"

--------------------------------------------------------


(Tune in tomorrow--I am planning a post that is designed NOT to gross you out!)

Pot of Pure Evil

Also known as boiled bean sprouts. The individual who cooked up this saucepan full of scariness came to me whimpering that she felt she had just tried to eat dead tadpoles. I did my best to soothe her and to boost her sense of accomplishment. Shush, sweetie...you DID just try to eat dead tadpoles. You did! And were they decomposing a little bit, too? Oh, my...that's my girl!

Helping your family get good nutrition can be such a bitch, sometimes!

Summer Moroseness

I bought this little envelope from a pair of eight-year-old door-to-door salesmen a couple of years ago and ran across it when cleaning out my bookshelves a couple of days ago (see below) . Normally, I am pretty hardhearted but this little marketing endeavor just killed me. I was so overcome at the poignancy of the situation--sandy-haired moppets standing on my doorstep offering me painstakingly collected hollyhock seeds tightly sealed up and so very carefully labeled "Fall Memories" (*sob!*) that I totally lost it and paid them 50 cents instead of the 25 they requested.

Phew! I'm still a mess about it all.

Thank God for Staircases

(Where would I keep all this crap if I didn't have them?)

The carpet in our bedroom is old and gross. Was old and gross. It is now gone, ripped out in a well-orchestrated series of manouvers consisting of a major room evacuation, massive furniture shifting, emptying of bookshelves, plus lots of crawling around with sharp razors and pliers. Next of course came the carting away of giant black bags filled with carpet and foam padding scraps and the lugging off of huge rolled up pieces of dusty, stained, wall-to-wall Berber circa 1980-something.
Then it was time to clean. As in dusting, mopping, scrubbing and even polishing, for God's sake.
The floor beneath is nice. Will be nice. Apparently the house owners who installed the carpet did so right after painting the room's woodwork, a plan that encouraged carelessness with the ol' high-gloss enamel. Or they had a paint fight or something. Doesn't really matter because even though I sort of love the dark brown, "schoolroom" look of the floor, I like it even more when it is sanded down to its pristine, glowing, caramel base. (Multiply the photo below times twenty for a general idea of the spatters. C'mon, do it! This is important to me!)

Thanks, I appreciate that! And hey, I've got some leftover PIE.

I don't know why it looks so very much like a violent crime just happened all over that pie plate. It's just the nature of wild blueberries, I guess!

Song Sickness

Ever have a song stuck in your head for days and days and days? Does it make you feel kind of crazy? Not really, you say? You enjoy the music your brain picks out for you, you say? Well, you probably have a good song, a lovely melody, something with poignant lyrics, perhaps you even have something without lyrics. You are just that classy, I know. But see, I don't consciously listen to music these days. Because I live with teenagers, there is usually something playing somewhere in the house, and so I get an ambient soundtrack. I like it, usually. I hear all sorts of new stuff. I am normally clueless as to the artist performing it, of course. And I don't usually get super close and personal with the lyrics, either. This had led me to make comments that are legend in the family--for instance, I once commended Beck's songs as an antidote to all the brutal and negative stuff out there. Then my son gleefully got to recite the lyrics to "Sun-Eyed Girl", a freak's disturbing but melodic rumination on the delimbing of a girlfriend or something equally tragic and gross. (C'mon,Beck ! What's with the psychopathic posturing?)



Anway, up at the cabin we tend to leave random belongings, year to year. Some clothes, books, toys always end up just becoming part of the landscape, something we can greet as we settle into our yearly visit. There's two pairs of bunny slippers that fit the girls about ten years ago. All the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories. Our tattered collection of Tintins. High-waisted khaki shorts two sizes too small for me and blue jeans coated with two or three different kinds of spilled fix-it substances for James. And then there's this CD. It's a nostalgia-tinged favorite of my oldest daughter, who isn't allowed to play it, apparently, when her two more musical siblings are in residence. It's cheesy. It's lame. It's the soundtrack to the Sabrina movie, circa 1996. As in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch movie, not Sabrina the 1995 remake of the 1954 Audrey Hepburn classic. No, this Sabrina was a cute little movie for kids, based on a cute TV show starring a cute blonde girl named Melissa Joan Hart. So the soundtrack is full of cute stuff by bands like The Spice Girls. They were all so cute, weren't they?


But the two music snobs weren't with us our final week at the cabin, so the Sabrina CD got all sorts of airtime. And yeah, that's where I picked up this song that's taken up residence in my head for many days now. It's sung by a little girl band, called Aqua, most known for the "Barbie" song ("I am a Barbie girl... in a plastic world..."). Using the same chord pattern and utilizing a deep driving bass in an cute call and response refrain, all the Aqua's songs sound nearly identical. But they're upbeat and girly and tons of fun at a pajama party. Really catchy. For instance, this Sabrina ditty I'm humming has a chorus that goes, Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, calling Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones, get up now! Repeat that. Then repeat it again and again and again. Then drive home from the cabin in a rainstorm that tries to impersonate a carwash, with waves of water hurling themselves at the car for fifty miles (upside is--those baked-on bug corpses were just scoured off the windshield!), fifty miles in which I white-knuckled the steering wheel and was sincerely grateful for the Aquas and their high-pitched, carefree ideas about singing and songwriting. It was a weird little bubble-gum mantra, is what I am saying. When the white lines on the freeway suddenly disappeared beneath sheets of rain I held tight. Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones...and when those lane dividers momentarily reappeared thereby encouraging the maniacs in the passing lane to resume driving at eighty miles an hour Dr. Jones Dr. Jones kept me calm and cool. Thanks, man.


But then I arrived home safe and sound. The other two kids had been running the house while I was gone--doing such a nice job keeping all the plants and pets alive. The Sabrina CD isn't allowed here, of course, but I can't stop hearing the Aquas, beseeching that doctor over and over and over to get his lazy butt out of their bed. Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones...GET UP NOW! Seriously. The sun has been shining and I haven't even had to get in the car since Wednesday night. I'd like to stop this incessant humming now. Who do you think I should talk to? Can anyone help me?

Beck? Are you there?

Earth-Shattering News

In all the years I've spent part of my summer on an island in Canada surrounded by blueberry bushes it never once occurred to me to make anything other than blueberry pie or blueberry muffins. I guess there's been blueberry pancakes once in awhile for breakfast. But blueberry pie has always been the dessert of choice, even if we can only scrape together two cups of berries. If that's the case, I just make a blueberry turnover which is technically a pie, right? A sweet, fruit-filled crusty affair?



But a couple of days ago it dawned on me that I could make blueberry shortcake with some of my just picked blueberry stash. So I did. The blueberries required more encouragement than strawberries or raspberries to develop the all-important syrup--I had to crush a portion of the blueberries and then, after adding sugar, and noticing how it refused to meld with the blueberry juices (because blueberries just don't have that kind of juice available) it became apparent that some small amount of cooking was going to be necessary. So I microwaved the berries for two minutes and that was perfectly sufficient. The heat created a lovely purple syrup and turned the berries toothsomely soft.

So our first blueberry shortcake (biscuit shortcakes, not sponge cake) was a very happy event. (You may have heard a rumor that plates were licked. It is true.)

Blueberry Shortcake