blackberries

My fresh blackberries are crying out for a perfect drink. This morning, I pulled a handful of plump, ripe blackberries from the bush beside my fence. This is the first year it has produced in volume and I can’t wait to find the perfect drink featuring its refreshing fruit.

You may remember that last fall I hosted a series of porch parties at which I served pitchers of martinis garnished with tomolives. Using pitchered drinks gave me a flavor profile to complement and made serving guests fast and easy. Now I’m searching for a summer equivalent.

The leading contender so far is a Little Black Cocktail. It contains blackberry purée and will be garnished with fresh picked berries. I’m working on the exact proportions which, fortunately for me, requires some scrumptious trial and error.

A strained purée of blackberries plus sugar and a touch of fresh lemon juice will produce a variety of beautiful flavors and colors to use as a base for my pitcher of cocktails. Once I have the taste of the purée nailed down, I’ll dilute with champagne or prosecco. Trader Joe’s Secco is a budget friendly choice if I decide to host multiple parties.

The beaker-style pitcher I use for martinis will work for Little Black Cocktails as well. It fits in the center of my ice bucket so it can stay both handy and chilled at the same time. I’ll serve in tall thin glasses that showcase the rich color and garnish with whole berries. If you prefer a pink cocktail, strawberries or raspberries are an easy substitution.

Other contenders for ideal summer cocktail include combinations of blackberries and whiskey. Whiskey doesn’t scream summer to me, but add some lemonade and I could lean that way. Same with smashed blackberries, bourbon, mint, lime, simple syrup and club soda. The mint and club soda lighten up the heavy feel of blackberries and bourbon.

But my strongest second choice is a blackberry gin fizz made with Hendrick’s gin. Most recipes call for muddled blackberries in this drink. That’s best done in short, individual glasses. A purée with simple syrup will work better for a pitcher version. Again, I’ll have to play with proportions.

It seems this is coming down to the need for lots of sampling and tweaking to perfect a summer pitcher cocktail filled with fresh blackberries. I hope I’m up to the task!

I can’t wait to get started. Bring on the blackberries!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Remembering and Renewal Can Go Hand-in-Hand

Daisy Remembering and renewal can go hand-in-hand. Where I grew up, Memorial Day coincided with larger traditions of Decoration Day. While the official holiday is to remember our veterans who died, my mom spent the day visiting every cemetery in which our relatives are buried. She’d remove last year’s old, faded, plastic arrangement from each grave and replace it with a new one.

This morning I am at my mother’s house, the one that now belongs to me and my sister. I walked down the road to the farm homesteaded by my great, great, great grandmother looking for wild strawberries. When I was here a few weeks ago they were in full bloom, so I was excited by the possibility of picking the small, juicy berries. I remember when I was 5 or 6 picking berries off these stems and popping them in my mouth right there on the spot. They were delicious.

Today, there are no berries, just a few stems chewed flat at the top most likely by the rabbit I saw bounding across the yard. While I feel disappointed about the berries, I had an enjoyable walk past an incredible display of verdant fields and a roadside of hearty weeds topped with delicate flowers. All around me I saw growth, change, renewal.

It’s common to become attached to things that feel familiar – not just furniture, paintings, dishes or clothes, but attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Sometimes loss or change will cause us to grasp onto the familiar with a death grip and hold on for dear life. Stay in an emotional spot too long and soon enough you’re in a rut. Ruts can be deep tracks that we subconsciously follow. While they give us a defined path which can look like a way forward, they also limit us to that path which can sometimes mean we’re stuck.
rut
When we’re stuck, there is no renewal. There’s no room for new growth because our physical, spiritual, and emotional space is full of the familiar. Remembering how things used to be can be a method of hanging onto the past and keeping us stuck, but it doesn’t have to be and nature is a great reminder of that.

I know what it feels like to move into the familiar groove of feeling alone, not really lonely, just alone as though I must carry any burden by myself. The only reason this is a reality for me now is that I easily slide into that familiar groove. I do it in spite of many layers of healing. It was my reality for so long at so young an age that I have many layers left to heal.

The good news is that not only do I have a healing process I trust, I see examples all around me of the renewal that happens naturally when we stop interfering.
sticker
I see it in the sticker bush that in two weeks has grown from two feet tall to 5 feet tall.
blossom berry
I see it in the blackberry bushes that in the same two weeks have shed lively flowers and begun to create fruit.
yellow dlion
I see renewal in the dandelions that spread their seeds on the wind. And I’m seeing all of this renewal on the farm where I grew up, the same farm where I spent most of my days walking through the fields and sitting in the woods…alone. It is a place of many memories. It is a place of renewal and growth.

Sometimes we remember how great things were because those are the things that left the biggest impression. This can either keep us stuck in the past or encouraged for the future. Sometimes we remember only the bad things. This can keep us stuck in our pain or give us a starting point for healing and renewal. Staying stuck in our memories or connecting with our memories to heal and move forward begin in the same place. It is the place of choice.

When I interviewed Life Coach Mack Arrington for our Cooking2Thrive interview series, he pointed out a moment at which I was “at choice”. It’s an expression I’ve heard from other life coaches and it’s exactly the time/place where memory and renewal intersect. Memorial Day is the perfect time for renewal to begin.

Maybe the Big Picture is Really Smaller Than You Think

When it comes to living a fulfilling, healthy life, maybe the big picture is really smaller than you think. I’ve spent a week surrounded by irony. My sister and I are cleaning out my mom’s house. It’s a four room farmhouse that over the years grew to 3500 square feet. Located seven miles south of the nearest town and 10 minutes from the first national river, the setting is lush, green, pastoral.
porch
Mom was obsessed with her health. Well, not so much health as her “something must be wrong”. It’s a well catalogued journey. The house is filled with handwritten lists, typed medical history, actual medical records, lab reports, and book after book after book on health, healing, diet, meditation, spiritual healing, and alternative medicine.

It is also filled with spiders, trash, mouse poison dumped in odd places, and dust. The furnace filters clearly haven’t been changed recently. The kitchen counters were so dirty when we arrived that we had to scrub them before we’d even sort dusty dishes on them. The irony? One of Mom’s primary health obsessions was allergies. She wore a dust mask if she went outside and sometimes inside. Well, okay clearly she needed it inside this house.
trash
Another favorite focus was food allergies. In the past two days, I’ve read three allergy reports in which she had skin tests for food allergies. According to an email she wrote, she tested allergic to all but 14 foods. In the lab results I read, there was only one allergy common to all 3 reports – brewer’s yeast, and only 3 foods overall above the moderate range of sensitivity. This wasn’t all that surprising. One of our favorite family stories is the time she told a waiter not to bring her coffee with dessert because she couldn’t have caffeine and then asked him to please bring her a coke. Not only did he look confused, he actually asked her which way it was. Was she allergic to caffeine or not?

For all the time, energy, and attention devoted to identifying foods she could have in order to protect her health, she ate little nutrition at all. We used to laughingly say she lived on Dr. Pepper, saltine crackers, and the occasional piece of cherry pie for 20 years.

That is how I remember it, but I’ve always doubted whether that memory was accurate. Then I found a health history Mom had written. In it she says she drank 12 to 14 twelve ounce Dr. Peppers per day. I read it three times to make sure. 12 to 14. That’s 1800 – 2100 calories per day of nothing but soda. My mom was 5’7″ and never weighed over 125 lbs. It sounds like I wasn’t that far off. She was mostly living on Dr. Pepper.

After days and days of following her health saga in bits and pieces as I sort trash, recycle, shred, donate, sell; trash, recycle, shred, donate, sell; trash, recycle, shred, donate, sell, a clear pattern has emerged. If only Mom had taken small steps each day to change her environment, perhaps she would achieved the overall health or healing she was seeking. Instead, she created an environment that isn’t healthy for anyone. Each decision she made contributed to exactly the health crisis she feared.

If she had chosen not to buy over 300 books (we’ve boxed 310 so far) on allergies, alternative cures, cancer prevention, and spiritual healing, she would have had room on the book shelves for books that stimulated her passion or imagination. Or better yet, she’d have had less books to collect dust the dust that irritated her allergies.

If she had chosen to sit on the porch swing every morning and watch the bluebirds, cardinals, swallows, and woodpeckers I saw this morning while drinking a cup of coffee, maybe she would have felt a greater sense of wonder at the beauty in her front yard.

If she had chosen to ride horses with my dad and me, she could have felt the freedom of a rush of wind when the horse hits a gallop.

If she had tried the vegetables from my grandmother’s garden next to our house, perhaps she would have feared eating them less.

Or perhaps she just would have decided she didn’t like them any more. Last year when the blackberry bushes began to produce loads of delicious blackberries, she decided she wasn’t too fond of them after all.
black berries
I will never understand or be able to explain why my mother made the choices she made, but she has provided me with many reminders that the way to create overall health lies in the small choices I make to improve the quality of my life each day.

I can choose to lift weights because it makes my muscles feel more loose and I like that feeling. I can choose to practice yoga because it helps me recognize my tendency to hold my breath when I feel stressed. I can choose to spend time with people who love to laugh. I can make time to sit on the porch and watch the birds. I can read something interesting every day. I can let go of possessions when I no longer need them. I can say no to buying something new unless it solves a problem. I can spend time playing with my granddog. I can show up to help when I’m needed and stay out of things when I’m not. I can take time to plan my meals so that I eat a variety of fresh food that tastes great. I can make time for those I love. I can sit still. I can get plenty of rest and drink plenty of water. I can practice gratitude and always, always tell myself the truth no matter how ugly it is.

Each of these choices is small and each of them improves the quality of any day. When I choose well, then add the days together, I construct a life that is improved one small choice at a time. Eventually, taking care of the small stuff every day will give me the big picture result I desire. And thus, the big picture turns out to be nothing more than one small choice at a time.