California taught our family abalone and chile, dim sum and kumquat, whole wheat and granola—habits that my parents tried to smuggle out. When we moved back to the Midwest, they fitted our dark Victorian with sliding glass doors and our backyard with a hibachi. We found whole wheat and granola abundant, even in our pizza-heavy college town. It was, after all, the ‘70s.
We settled in to shoveling snow and raking leaves. And sometimes, remembering California.
In Palo Alto, our home had adhered to sleek midcentury style. The dining room was filled with a vast single canvas on loan from a friend of Mom’s, a singer-songwriter-painter short on storage. It showed the inside of an outsize closet—crumpled jeans, rumpled rag dolls, and balled-up socks tumbling out onto our meals. Mom’s answer to sleek.
In our new old house in Iowa, we didn’t need a painting to evoke clutter. Short on dim sum and chiles, we cooked, a lot. One sticky afternoon, while Mom and I were heaping blueberries into pie shells, our heavy doorbell thunked. It was the singer-songwriter-painter. She brought her guitar and her friends. All night the adults strummed and sang. The kids sprawled at a distance, passing the Princess phone. We were, after all, teenagers.
In the morning the rugs were thick with groggy musicians. I wondered how we’d toast enough whole wheat. Instead, Mom set the pies in the oven and sent Dad out for ice cream. And that was breakfast: fat wedges of blueberry pie and drippy scoops of vanilla, melting into the curves of Dad’s handmade ceramic bowls. Counter to our usual culture, and way better than granola.
So delicious! Flaky crust, perfect sweetness to the blueberries - Served warm and paired with Vanilla ice cream - this was a summer treat!