Food Friday: Summer Foolishness

Congratulations, Gentle Readers. We have survived the Dog Days of Summer. The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the Dog Days are the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11. It has been hot and stinky, and now there is a tropical storm blowing north. What’s next? Oh, I hope you have a happy Friday the thirteenth.

The prospect of summer is always so much brighter than the reality. It must be the kid in us, thinking about summer vacation and long, empty, languid days of playing and swimming, going to the lake, going to the ocean, going to camp. Days when we could amble up to the corner store and buy a cup of Italian ice with our jangly allowance coins. Evenings when, as a treat, we would pile in the family car to go to the Dairy Queen and get twirly ice cream cones, that would drip down our arms and off our elbows. There were days on the porch, reading library books, and afternoons sitting in the freezing dark movies, enjoying the novelty of air conditioning.

I have experienced a major reality check. I haven’t gone swimming in well over a year. I can’t remember the last time I had an Italian ice, or a chocolate dipped Dairy Queen cone. It’s too hot to read on the front porch, and anyway, the mosquitoes would just carry me off to their fetid lair to delight in my exsanguination. But I am enjoying the summer, despite being an adult. I have discovered the blackberry fool.

One need not restrict oneself to blackberries, I hasten to note. Many soft fruits are in season right now, but blackberries seem particularly lush and emblematic of summer. I remember picking blackberries and raspberries when I was very little. There were a couple of bushes from which my brother and I would pluck fruit carefully, avoiding the snagging thorns. I don’t think we ever brought baskets or buckets with us to our little harvests; we went purposefully to eat every sun-warmed berry that we could find. Maybe the blackberry fool is just a Proustian prompt for me. I am remembering those couple of carefree summers when we scavenged for berries, and sated ourselves with the bounty of our own foraging.

Do this prep as close to dinner as you can because you want the whipped cream to stay whipped, and not get runny and watery. Find your fruit: blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, over-ripe peaches, pitted cherries, blueberries, plums. Macerate the berries in a bowl with a little water, sugar and lemon juice. Lightly crush the fruit with a fork. (This is the fooling part: crushing the fruit.) Let everything sit and steep for a while.

Go read a magazine, work on the crossword. Come back to the kitchen and whip up a large bowl of heavy cream. Don’t add the sugar until you have a bowlful of stiff peaks. In a separate bowl mix half of the fruit with half of the whipped cream. Then use a pretty wine glass and layer in fruit, whipped cream with fruit, whipped cream, and top with more of the crushed fruit. It will be better than JELL-O 1-2-3.

Refrigerate through dinner. If I have planned ahead, I will add a couple of Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies for a crunchy accompaniment. And if we are lucky, we can take these delightful fools out onto the back porch, while we search the sky for errant Perseid meteors. I’ll be watching out for the mosquitoes.

https://www.space.com/perseid-meteor-shower-2021-peak

Here is the origin of the term “fool”: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/great-british-fool-51198790

I don’t like adding vanilla to whipped cream – it reminds me of canned grocery store whipped cream – but Martha likes it: https://www.marthastewart.com/313663/blackberry-fool

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150710-dog-days-summer-sirius-star-astronomy-weather-language

“So it is with blackberries. If you pull too hard, you may get the berry but you will lose the sweetness of it. On the other hand, if you leave it, it may be gone the next time you come by. Each person must find this point of equilibrium for himself.”
― Robert Finch