The Loping Blues
A Summer Read on the Simple Pleasure of Chasing Cantaloupe Bites with Blueberries
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Once in a while, a few things come together in extraordinary ways. This includes summer harvests, when foods taste the sweetest, the most flavorful, the absolute best.
It’s when one and one no longer equal two.
Now this is not a newsletter about food or cooking. There are much better offerings. Hard not to like Nicola Lamb's kitchen trials where she experiments with a dozen iterations, varying the proportions of ingredients.
This is a newsletter about compelling stories. Readers and writers must eat, so why not mention food, especially extraordinary moments when it hits your mouth in unexpected pleasure?
First, the blueberries. Blueberry Hill Farms in Edom, Texas has acres of bushes. June is the height of picking season and they open their fields to all.
Not everybody lives near a blueberry farm, but there’s bound to be bounty nearby. Even New Mexico, with its dry clime, has cornucopias along it’s rivers and streams.
Armed with a basket, Debbie and I strode into the hot sun and amongst the bushes. These bushes were chest high and somewhat scrawny compared to voluptuous Vermont bushes, but we don’t judge a blueberry bush by its Miss Agricultural glamor shot. When picking blueberries, it’s all about the taste.
The bushes were loaded with berries, some small and pink, many dark blue and bursting with ripeness.
When picking blueberries, quality control is a must. We sample a bush’s offerings, because one does not want to place bad-tasting berries in the basket.
OK, OK, just don’t ask how many bad blueberry bushes I’ve picked from. I’ll get back to you on that, after I’ve finished eating. Since hand-picked blueberries are sold by the pound, we tell them to add a little to the scale reading to make up for what we ate.
Eating blueberries fresh off the bush is a high point among life’s pleasures. So much better than many store-bought berries, which are often picked before ripeness for transport. Kept out of the heat or even refrigerated, they’ll last for a few days.
Mine has a few stems still attached. I could pluck them off, but that only delays the delivery of the berry to its destination. It’s only roughage and don’t nine out of ten doctors agree we could use more in our diets?
Next comes the cantaloupe, which, unlike blueberry bushes, does not allow for sampling. Choosing a ripe cantaloupe is an art, involving pressing the stem end. One of us, Debbie or myself, is better than the other. The better chooser has even been spotted in a public market sniffing the stem ends. Not so much to accept or reject, but more for the appearance of knowing what we’re doing.
Anyhow, if you’ve scored a ripe cantaloupe, you’ve won the summer culinary lottery. Enjoy its firm flesh, it’s not-too sweet flavor. Many cantaloupes, especially if not peak ripeness, come off flat in flavor and it’s disappointing. Not a ripe one.
Even better, chase that cantaloupe bite with a few flavor-bursting fresh blueberries.
I’ll often try to make up for mere mehness in cantaloupe and berries by mixing them in yogurt and/or drizzling with honey. With fresh, ripe fruit, no need. You’ll discover one and one no longer equal two, but a higher number altogether.
What are your summer favorites?
All the Best,
Geoff
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A very fun read, Geoff. Lots of humor if you digest slowly. I've been noticing the blueberries we get at Publix are all show and no taste. I'll take you up on swallowing the roughage. The last serious berry picking I did was at my motel in Seattle waiting for the senior member of our engineering team to pick us up for a visit to Boeing (it wasn't the 737). I noticed along the chain link fence a hedge of naturally growing blackberries. Some of the best I've tasted. There's one more memory you sparked. The first time I ever had homemade ice cream was at 4820 Henican, which I believe was churned out on a hand cranked machine. Vanilla was served with fresh blueberries added once it was spooned out. I raved to my family about this new dessert. So we got to work on Albert Ct. to duplicate this experience. Dad bought an electric version, which I was glad to see, remembering that that hand cranking wouldn't work unless you had a team effort. Well, we learned that you don't add the blueberries to the raw mix, but afterwards. There's a good chemistry lesson in making ice cream as well - properties of salt in solution.