at the movies…
Have to share this.
Have to share this.
My dear professor, Nelson Bentley, used to say that recurring memories are poems waiting to be written.
After visiting a friend’s all-northwest garden Wednesday evening, I woke yesterday morning from a dream — I think it was a dream — of Oregon Grape. At least, I found myself drenched in images of it as I lay awake. A memory or a dream. I remembered that my mother always warned her children not to eat the berries, thinking them poison, but that my dad said that his mother used to make Oregon Grape jelly. The leaves of Oregon Grape are prickly, and the berries are very, very tart. I wondered what led my grandmother to pick such berries, and not other, sweeter berries. I wondered if my dad and his brothers and sister picked berries for her. I wondered why I had never tasted them for myself, or if I had.
I wondered…
I went on-line and found this website, Wild Foods and Medicines, and, on it, these two recipes:
Oregon Grape Jelly
This is a standard jelly recipe with liquid pectin. I have made it 3 years in a row and the recipe has held up consistently. Make sure to harvest the berries when they are deep blue. They will still be tart, but less so than unripe berries.
Oregon Grape Lavender Jelly (Low sugar)
I tried this recipe for the first time this year and I like it better than the high sugar jelly. I used Pomona’s Universal Pectin. The lavender was a last-minute inspiration since I spied it drying near by – the flavors compliment each other well! Toast with Oregon grape jelly and an egg has been my daughter Lucy’s “out of this world breakfast.”
And now I need to find out what a Foley Food Mill is. Or just write a poem.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p_ygTw4reA&w=560&h=315]
I’m still recovering from our trip, and trying to get my mojo back.
It wasn’t supposed to be about writing, but our Orlando trip — which was for the express purpose of visiting Disney World and Universal Studios — ended up having its measure of drama. (Thanks, Emma.)
Seeing The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was the main attraction. I read the books aloud to the girls when they were little, and being in Diagon Alley was just as exciting as this documentary promises.
Amazing to think that this all emerged from the imagination of a writer.