Summer Berries for a Breakfast with Friends

Imagine my surprise when I found three cups of summer in the freezer - hidden behind the frozen edamame was a container of wild black raspberries I had completely forgotten about.

We picked them as kids and called them blackberries - but now I'm older and wiser, and know that if they have a concave shape inside, and leave that raised white button ("rasp") on the canes they are technically wild black raspberries. From our house my sister, brothers and I would cut behind the Thompson's yard, and up the hill into the sunny fields where the berries grew along the trails. When searching, we'd look for a glint of pale blue-green from the canes; easier to spot from a distance then the berries themselves. Then we'd pick in heat of the sun - only the ripe sweet dark ones from the clusters of pink, red and black. If we could fill a measuring cup my mother would make muffins for us four kids when we got home.

Where we live now there are some wild berries within walking distance of our house, but to find the more you have to take a short drive to the old train tracks behind the Elks Club. Last summer Husband, Evie, Rosie, Son H and I went with plastic buckets and water bottles to get our loot, have our fingers stained crimson red, and collect quite a few scratches from the canes.

My amazingly creative friends Kevin and Rosanne were coming over for breakfast last week, and the thawed berries got baked up into everything. First muffins, of course, then rolled in cinnamon rolls. Dropped into pancake batter next.

Just three good friends from Columbia High School, (and I knew Kevin from birth since he had lived across the street), deep snow outside, and summer berries for breakfast. We were laughing over creativity, life, and loves lost, and at one point I was tearing up remembering the lines from the song Same Old Lang Syne. Frozen food in that song, by the way.

No alcohol served, but I must have been drunk on conversation.  As the old friends were heading out the door and I was leaving to pick up my son at preschool, I couldn't find the keys I was holding in my own hand.

Loretta