Winter Treat

Both Stop & Shop and Trader Joe's have blackberries on sale. (The blackberries from Trader Joe's were perfect. The blackberries I purchased from Stop & Shop were a bit tart.)



I love blackberries. It's hard not to eat a whole container in one sitting or put a whole container on one bowl of cereal. And to have blackberries in February in New England seems so extravagant! But I couldn't resist and decided to treat myself.

I popped a berry into my mouth and was taken back to a childhood memory. When I was little we lived in the Berkshires. In the back of my grandmother's yard, there was a fantastic climbing tree and a neighbor named Oz who grew wild blackberries. He was an older gentleman with a big beard and a very scary looking scare-crow in his yard. This, of course, made him pretty scary to a small child. But he was harmless and very pleasant. My grandmother and Oz were friends and so we were allowed to pick his wild blackberries. I remember being very afraid of the scarecrow and sneaking into Oz's yard, grabbing some blackberries and then running back to the house. The blackberries were worth the fear. I was pretty young; we moved to Cambridge shortly after I turned 3.