sign of summer

[redbird]

A blackberry just burst on my tongue.

Yes, it's a shipped-from-somewhere-South berry, but basically ripe, and sweet and juicy. And I have several more in a bowl, and the rest of a small container I'm saving for breakfast.

(Sure, it's cool and damp this evening, but I have blackberries. Also hot chocolate, because it is that kind of night. Do I contradict myself? Very well...)

Comments

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I'm jealous (dark-purply).

[numbat.livejournal.com]

So I'm sitting here having just had a bowl of pea and ham soup (from work) with a couple of fresh bread rolls and thinking something sweet would be nice when I read this. Now I'm wishing for blueberries and peach slices with vanilla ice-cream. If it were not for the bitterly cold wind and rain outside I might even do something about this.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I had my first strawberry of the year last Thursday. More on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Now I need to find some more locally grown organic strawberries to eat :-)

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I've been missing hot chocolate. This is silly, because of course I could make myself a mug of hot chocolate any time - real hot chocolate made with melted chocolate, hot milk, and a sloosh of orange vodka - but it just hasn't felt like the right kind of weather over here to be drinking hot chocolate. Hot and muggy. Well, hot and muggy by Scottish standards.

The thing I miss, still, about the tiny weekend/summer cottage my parents had near Dryburgh, is picking blackberries: the feel of a perfectly ripe berry almost falling into my hand as I reach to pick it, the quick but careful check for other smaller eaters, the taste of the juicy black globules bursting in my mouth, the satisfactory feeling of seeing the brambles mounding up in the bucket, and the bramble-and-apple pie we used to have for pudding on those nights.

Mmmmm.

[avram]

Widely known, but rarely said, is that the first step in making hot chocolate is Be someplace cold.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

There is an exception to this: Aztec-style hot chocolate is good when it's hot. Lots of hot pepper goes well with hot weather.

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Want a bowl of virtual mulberries? I'll pick you some from my backyard. They're even purpler, and if they are a touch on the reddish side, have a lovely, uncloying flavor. They're also good, if they're dead ripe, lightly sprinkled with lime juice.