Get Those Blueberries Out of My Medicine Cabinet, You Freak

August 26, 2008

Get Those
Blueberries
Out of My Medicine Cabinet,
You Freak

by Wendy Mogel

A bad breakfast day begins.  I shuffle into the kitchen, innocent of what lies waiting.  The little card tucked inside (sneaky!) my carton of blueberries says something like, “Research shows that eating a handful of blueberries protects you from cataracts, varicose veins,  hemorrhoids, peptic ulcers, ovarian cysts, every kind of cancer, and at the very same time improves your night vision.”  And, in tiny print:  studies funded by the Blueberry Council.

  Next I see that my cereal box too is hawking disease prevention:  “Eat this stuff every single day and you’ll lose five pounds and won’t acquire sticky plaque on your arteries.” 

    To take my mind off extra pounds and diseases I open the New York Times and right there on page two is an ad for sparkling, chandelier diamond earrings from Harry Winston for the price of…what?... a car.  Now I’m afflicted with jewelry lust.  To escape from these unpleasant mental states, I move on to the Science section and there’s an article about caffeine.  The rhythm of the writing reminds me of the scene in Chinatown where Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) spills the true dirt about her family to private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson):  “She’s my sister.  My daughter.  Sister/daughter, sister/daughter.”  Caffeine:  Bad/good, bad/good; causes addiction/wards off dementia; diuretic/not a diuretic.  I guess it depends on the source of the research funding.  I can’t escape my fate.  There’s no doubt that I do have sticky plaque, don’t have the right earrings, and may or may not be warding off dementia.  Probably already too demented to know.  I’ve lost my appetite.  I’ll just have some white toast. As they say on Facebook mood =    Or as Eeyore says, “Good morning, if it is a good morning, which I doubt.”

Fruit fight!.

To cheer myself up I compose a friendly little message suitable for a blueberry carton in an alternate universe:  “Fresh berries are fragile and should be washed gently and patted dry—but only just prior to eating or cooking, lest you remove the protective bloom on their skin.  Also, why not take a moment to appreciate how adorable blueberries are?  They’re so small and round—see their jaunty little crowns?— and they’re the only blue food.”

I’ll include a tiny recipe:
Melt some butter in a pan.  Add sugar and your berries.  Now marvel at how one berry after another pops and deflates into a voluptuous, glossy purple mass.  There’s nothing better on this earth to spoon on top of French toast or pancakes.

    When I was growing up the advertising credo was “sex sells soap.” Today, disease sells blueberries.  I would start a fruit-rights organization if only I could figure out an acronym as mellifluous as PETA.  I tried, but failed.  PEACH: (People against Exploitation of Cherries….), GRAPE: (Get Real, Appreciate….), FLAG (Fruit Lovers Against Greed), and the super cloddy UMF (United against the Medicalization of Food).  If you come up with anything, please let me know.

Maybe we just need some legislation - a Fruit Bill of Rights.

      In the 1985 Albert Brooks movie, Lost in America, a yuppie couple from L.A. quit their jobs, sell everything they own, and set out in an RV to live as free spirits, to find themselves… “to touch Indians.”  When Brooks discovers that his wife (Julie Haggerty) has gambled away their entire life savings in a Las Vegas casino, he chastises her by saying you are NEVER to use the words “nest” and “egg” in the same sentence again.  Remembering this movie inspires me to declare my first fruit right:  Mention no specific diseases in any sentence in which you speak of fruit.  Mention beautiful color, texture and flavor; mention that fruit is good for you or even very good for you, but no naming of diseases or symptoms of diseases.

    Right Number Two:  Limit all written fruit promotional materials to enticing recipes.  (Think of these recipes as little passports or calling cards.)  They can be very basic.  When my brother-in-law and I talk about something simple we’ve baked, one of us always asks in a reverential tone:  “Did-you-use-the … recipe-on-the-box?”  We know how trusty they are.  Classic Tollhouse cookies, fudge brownies, cornbread—they have gravitas.  Now I’m checking in my fridge.  My current box of baking soda, in dignified and friendly text—which could so easily focus on smelly athletic shoes or gum inflammation—provides a simple recipe for “Festive Drop Sugar Cookies.”  A few snowflakes are scattered about with a straightforward suggestion:  These cookies are a fun project your family can do together.

    Yes! The word “festive” reminds me of how when my daughter was in seventh grade, she and her friends, lovers of irony, tried to use the word “festive” as often as possible. For example, after a Biology exam:

How was it?
Festive.
Field trip to the tar pits on Wednesday. Should be festive.

    Thinking about Albert Brooks, recipes on boxes, and seventh graders is improving my mood.  In the spirit of giving the purity of fresh fruit a little more airtime, I offer three more recipes with no medical claims.  They are fun to make, easy to clean up, and your child can be the chef.

Outdoor-grill summer fruit recipe:

    Take some ripe, but not mushy, nectarines or peaches or plums.  If there’s a nice little ridge around the fruit, use it as your cutting guide.  Hold the fruit in both hands and twist in opposite directions along the cut until the fruit splits in half nicely.  Or you can just cut the fruit in half lengthwise with a knife.  Pop out the pit and sprinkle the cut sides with a mixture of Muscovado sugar (a dark, dark brown sugar from Mauritius, with the flavor of molasses), freshly grated nutmeg, and a sprinkling of cayenne pepper.  If you don’t have this fancy stuff around, you don’t need it one bit.  Use white or brown sugar and regular nutmeg.  Put the fruit halves on the grill and cook until they relax and get gorgeous.  If the skin burns, peel the blackened part off.  Serve with grilled chicken, or over ice cream, or make them into tarts.

Grilled fruit tarts:

 
    The authors of the Joy of Cooking write that there are as many recipes for galette dough as there are cooks in France.  Press little freeform rounds of any buttery pastry dough into the bottom of each section of a muffin tin.  Cover with a thin round of almond paste—Odense brand is good, the slices you can make from the tube are exactly the right diameter and it’s easy to order online if they don’t stock it in your market.  Now put the grilled nectarines (or figs or plums) on top.  Dot with few ungrilled blueberries or raspberries.  Sprinkle a little white sugar on top. Bake at 350 until the edges of the dough peeking out from the bottom are little bit browned.  Cool a bit on a wire rack or prop up on a plate so air can circulate underneath, then lift the tarts out gently with a fork. 

Silly fruit recipe:

    Put a very ripe banana in the microwave.  Sprinkle the puree with cinnamon.  Feed to a small or large baby.  Or eat yourself before you open the newspaper in the morning.

Now that I’ve overcome my breakfast discontent, I’m rolling.

Travel recommendation:

Iceland.  It’s the green one.  Greenland is icy. 

    Iceland is the opposite of thinking about cataracts while eating blueberries.  It’s kind of the opposite of everything.  It’s the size of Kentucky and has a population of 300,000. Seventy-five percent of the population lives in Reykjavik, the capital city, so the rest of the country is very, very, very uncrowded.  And filled with glaciers, geysers, volcanoes, waterfalls, thermal hot springs, stunningly clean air, and unusually sturdy, calm and beautiful horses the size of ponies.  Put Iceland on your list of good places for the spirit. 

Here’s a photo I took last week. It’s a bilberry bush—we call them huckleberries—in a field next to Gullfoss (“golden falls”), in Southern Iceland.
Here’s the waterfall. Bilberries in hand at the top of the blog.

Reading recommendations:

    Sandra Tsing Loh’s brand new, genius, midlife parenting memoir, Mother on Fire (Crown Books, 2008).  Check out the New York Times review.

    My Life in France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme (Anchor Books, 2007).  Not a whit about parenting—just about food, sensuality, hard work, and the satisfaction of combining all three.

 

August 26, 2008