Pinterest has been a wonderful boon on my creative output. At this very moment, as I write this, I am waiting for some chocolate ice cream to set in the freezer and a coat of polyurethane to dry on a floor mat I'm making, both thanks to someone else's cleverness and Pinterest.
The reason I mention this is that this recipe comes from a pin I saw a few days ago that led to this NPR article about blackberries. In case you weren't aware, I love blackberries. Out of all fruits, they are second only to boysenberries, and general just end up winning, since boysenberries are never at the farmer's market anymore.
Now if you clicked on that link, you might have noticed that there are a few tasty blackberry recipes there, but the most intriguing (to me anyway) is for Sweet Corn and Blackberry Ice Pops. Corn is tasty, to be sure, but not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of breaking that summer heat with a delicious popsicle. Well think again! These are super tasty, easy to make, and completely unique.
Sweet Corn and Blackberry Popsicle Recipe(makes 6 small popsicles, or 4 medium-sized popsicles)
Shuck and rinse:
2 ears sweet corn
Then cut off the kernels and cut the de-kernels cobs in a few pieces. Put everything together in a saucepan.
Add:
1 1/2 cups half and half
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Bring the entire mixture to a simmer for a minute or so. You want the corn to turn a deeper yellow and soften. When that happens, turn off the heat.
Add:
1/2 tsp vanilla
Let the mixture cool for at least an hour, preferably a few. We did just an hour and it was tasty, but I imagine the flavor will get stronger if you let it sit for a few more.
In the meantime, rinse and mash:
1/2 heaping cup of blackberries
2 tsp (or so) sugar
You don't want the blackberry mixture to be too sweet, since the corn will be sweet and the sweet/tart contrast is what makes these so tasty.
After the corn mixture has cooled, pick out the cob pieces and discard them. Then pour the corn mixture into a food processor or blender and puree it. Pour it through a mesh sieve. You will likely have to scrap and push with your fingers to get all the solid corn bits out and all the corn juice through. That's fine, I'll wait.
For pouring, you just want to alternate between the corn and blackberry mixtures. the blackberry is a bit heavier than the corn, but it didn't end up sinking very much in our pops. In fact, most of the blackberries were at the bottom of the pops (the end that is highest during freezing.
Let them sit in the freeze for at least a couple hours to firm up. We let ours sit overnight. If you have trouble removing them, run the plastic under some warm water and they'll slide right out.
 |
| Yum! |
Reading!
The Secret Life of Bees
by Susan Monk Kidd
I always want to start these reviews by telling you how much I loved the book, but I doubt I'll ever spend a lot of time reviewing a book I really didn't like, so let's just assume I loved this book (I did!). It's been sitting on my shelf for a long time, and it seemed like a summer-y sort of book, so as soon as my summer classes finished, I picked it up.
The story follows a girl named Lily Owens who lives in a racist little South Carolina town in 1964 with her abusive father T. Ray and her Black "stand-in mother" Rosaleen. Lily is haunted by one of her earliest memories: a fight between her father and mother, a gun that Lily picked up, and a shot that killed her mother. Lily yearns for parental love and forgiveness, but finds none in T. Ray's house. When fierce-hearted Rosaleen gets on the wrong side of the biggest racists in town, Lily takes the opportunity to run away with her and discover her mother's past in the home of three Black sisters and bee keepers.
I found Lily to be a compelling narrator. She is not particularly exceptional, but her need for a mother's love, which can be so strong at times that it produces a physical, feverish type of pain in her, endeared her to me. She is very much an adolescent, wanting her imaginary perfect mother while blind to the fact that she is surrounded by surrogate mothers ready to take on her cares and protect and love her. Most interesting is her relationship with Roseleen, who is the oldest of her mother figures. It's complicated, because Rosaleen is paid to care for Lily, and because Lily is White and conditioned to see Rosaleen as somehow inferior, and because Lily randomly exhibits classic examples of teenage daughter tension with Rosaleen. She has a tendency to notice Rosaleen's defects (which include crimes such a chewing too loudly) when they are in new or important company, or just when Lily is angry or upset about something else entirely.
Lily's thoughts on race are interesting to watch develop as well. She constantly questions the racial views of other white people, which she never held to very strongly in the first place. During her time living in the pink house with August, June, and May, she tries to find her place in the house of people who her peers see as "beneath her." She finds herself attracted to a Black boy and must deal with an entirely new element of race relations. She sees racial tensions erupt into racial violence and breed hatred and anger in good people. Her observations are insightful and I enjoyed watching her point of view develop throughout the novel.
Finally, Kidd's writing style is beautiful. It's straight forward, with moments of extremem poetry that would make you look up from the book and roll over the words in your mind. These are best when they creep up with you in the text, but here is one for an example. Lily and Rosaleen are escaping and they get in a fight and sit, fuming, on different sides of a river. Lily looks across the river at Rosaleen, and thinks, "In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms."
This book is full of sad things, but it's full of happy ones too, and beautiful ones. The Black Madonna is something I'll leave to the novel, but it is a powerful symbol and story. Happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment