6/29/10

Breakfast.

Bumber crop of parsley.  Sauted parsley in a tiny bit of canola oil, and then added fresh picked spinach.  Spinach is starting to shoot, but many leaves remain around the edges of the plant.  Paler than the young leaves, but no less tasty.   Color restored to dark green after 30 seconds in the pan. 

First harvest of blueberries.   A few large, plump berries had fallen off the bush.  For some reason, the berries on the lower branches seem to have ripened first.    “Chandler,” on east side, is bearing most heavily at this time.   Only one or two blackberries were black.  Many raspberries have turned a raspberry color, but only a few in each cluster have turned dark.  These are sweetest.  I will wait for raspberries.

Gathered blueberries in colander, and gave them a quick rinse.  Then eat plain in bowl.   About 90 seconds from bush to mouth.  The overwhelming impression was of the sun.  Each berry seemed to have absorbed the essence of the last two hot and humid days.    Neither sweet nor sour – the predominant flavor was blueberry.  Warm blueberry.  Blueberry never refrigerated.   The texture was far softer than any blueberry I have ever eaten.  Not soft in the mushy 10-days-in-the-fridge sort of way,  but melt-in-your-mouth soft.   The berry surrenders with soft pressure and releases a shot of flavor.

Does any billionaire in Manhattan today enjoy a more luxurious morning?   What is a gold-plated shower, or even a Picasso in the bathroom , compared to this?  What a journey.  The native Americans of Manahatta would have risen from this spot on a late June morning and wandered to a nearby blueberry patch for breakfast.    Now, 400 years later, man and blueberry are rejoined on the island, on a green roof mirroring, 35 stories in the sky, the land below that had lain encased in a concrete tomb for most of that time.  A resurrection.  If every building I see had a green roof, the entire island could be resurrected, pushing up through the street grid, reborn closer to the sun.