Broccoli Rising and the Natural, the Unnatural, and the Supernatural
We are entering fully into spring, when the angels sing, sap rises, buds unfurl, and the fruit is so ripe, sweet, juicy, full-flavored, fragrant, and nutrient-dense, it needs no embellishment. So it was with last week’s strawberries — they were locally grown, seasonal, tart-sweet, perfumey, and pin-up pretty. They were everything strawberries are meant to be.
And then they weren’t. Overnight, they went dead-ripe, and oozed sticky, red juice all over the refrigerator shelf.
You think you know a strawberry. You think it’s a berry. Because that’s its name. But along with blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, and the like, strawberries are classified as aggregate achenes. Stone fruit, like peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries, with sweet flesh enclosing a single seed, are drupes. Drupes can droop. Achenes age. That is the nature of things. Produce has a natural life span, just like the rest of us.
We can sometimes blame faded fruit on our food system, which has become anything but natural. The norm is to pick and pack fruit that’s underripe, then blast it with preservatives so it better withstands the long haul from the field to your kitchen.You can tell that’s the case when its despite pretty looks, it taste blah (talking to you, peaches).
We can blame ourselves for going into spring fruit rapture and buying more than we can eat and enjoy in a timely manner. Fruit can languish on the counter or in the back of the fridge, slouching into decay until we discover — the horror! the horror!! — it’s gone soft or grown some fuzz.
Sometimes we can even blame nature. In South Florida, strawberries come in season starting in February. It’s a short, sweet season, and they’re over and done by the time spring hits the rest of the country. Yow, are they done.
I don’t blame the strawberries for ripening any more than I blame my eyes for being so deep-set as to cast shadows. I’ve had circles under my eyes since I was eight years old. That’s my nature, sad but true. Fortunately, there’s under-eye spackle. Concealer. Makeup that makes the dark circles look somewhat less dark. Cobblers, crumbles, buckles, betties, pan dowdies, and other baked fruit desserts with unlovely names let us give new life to aged or imperfect produce, dressing it up and disguising it with a little batter or biscuit dough and sugar.
Got aging aggregate achenes? Droopy drupes? Cut away any offensively bad bits, but bring the rest to this fruit cobbler recipe. There’s no waste, no blame, no dairy or eggs, no perfect piecrust anxiety, just enough dough cobbled together to contain the fruit as it bakes into juicy splendor. My plantbased pie dough is easy and requires no rolling. You can pat it right into the pan, load it up with fruit, and bake.
Whatever you call your fruit, make the most of it, don’t let it droop or go to waste. That, my dears, is a crime against nature.
Broccoli Cofidential Subscribers can find The Cure for Droop Fruit Cobbler recipe at the end of the newsletter. If you haven’t upgraded your subscription yet you can do it now!
More vegan recipes for fresh or faded fruit:
Chrissy Tracey’s blackberry basil cobbler from her new book, Forage & Feast
Fran Costigan’s fruit grunt
Perhaps you’re feeling a little droopy yourself. Honey, given what’s going on in the world, who could blame you? I hope this Broccoli Rising chat with the extraordinary novelist, Margot Livesey adds a little cheer and helps cobble you together.
Margot’s new novel, The Road from Belhaven, set in 19th century Scotland, tells the story of Lizzie Craig, who’s named for Margot’s great-grandmother, and is cobbled together from the few bits and pieces Margot has learned about her. Both the real Lizzie and the one in The Road from Belhaven have the power of second sight, the ability to glimpse — but not control — the future.
If you’re thinking, fiction, hunh, that’s different for Broccoli Rising, not really. What other food-focused newsletter is going to include a reference from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness?. Literature and narrative nourish our humanity just as food prepared with care nourishes our bodies. We could use more nourishment, more humanity and more civility.
Margot and I talk about the supernatural, civility, what stories tell you that grownups don’t, and the joy of jacket potatoes.
May
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so take a moment:
Be kind to yourself. That means getting enough sleep, exercise, and nourishing food to make you smile.
Breathe. Breathing’s natural. It’s not complicated. We’re complicated. Jill Nussinow, the Veggie Queen helps you ground yourself with breathwork workshops.
Meditate. It’s an age-old healing practice with benefits backed up by modern science
Connect with nature. Practice shinrin-yoku, aka forest bathing You don’t even need a forest. Just a few minutes with a little natural greenery can lower your blood pressure and anxiety and boost your mood.
Work that humanity and civility muscle. Be kind to others. We’re all kind of fragile these days.
Mental Health Awareness Month serves as a gentle reminder no one has to struggle alone. Turn to resources:
friends
family
therapists
and similar nonprofits
Massachusetts General’s McCance Brain Center offers an easy brain health care quiz to assess how you’re doing. It can help steer you away from issues including depression, stroke and dementia .
May 5 Cinco de Mayo, often observed here as cinco de drinko, it celebrates Mexico’s defeat of France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
May 12 Mother’s Day – Sending love to all you moms. You always give a little something extra. Wishing a happy, loving Mother’s Day to all — and to the mother of us all, Mother Earth. One of the most joyful ways to celebrate her is with a vegan diet.
May 15 Miami folk! Award-winning cookbook author Joan Nathan is here to talk about her new and most intimate cookbook, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family and Memories. I’m honored to be in conversation with her. Come join us.
May 27 Memorial Day — the day we honor America’s military who died in service to our country. We thank you as though our lives depend on it. Because they do. Our hearts are with you this Memorial Day and every day.