Crumble

By Gwen Morgan

Rain. Not a gentle summer rain, but the sort that hammers down on the roof, sounds like it will flatten the landscape or cause floods, but somehow only makes the world soggy and weighted down. Through the wet curtain of branches I can see blank white, which means fog has disappeared the harbor. Happy the woman who is inside and not picking her way through this on a boat. Happier still if she can take the berries picked yesterday and make raspberry crumble.

There is nothing else quite like these American summers up north. Europe has the south of France and the Swiss Alps, there is sailing in Corsica or along the Dalmatian coast, and surely there is more miserable weather than this in, say, Scotland. But there is nothing quite like the rusticating that Americans seek in the summer as they go north to cabins and cottages, to lakes, islands, and bits of coastline. For a few weeks thousands of Americans take off and live what they suppose to be a simpler existence where they hike and ride bikes instead of driving cars, where they swim, paddle and sail, pick wild berries, fish, eat all the local foods in season. At night the children play cards while the grownups drink cocktails on covered porches. If it’s fine, they might all be out at the point, getting in a last swim.

In this moment, even the raspberries are allowed for a moment simply to be. In the rest of the year, they are overshadowed by their ellagitannins and antioxidant benefits, as if they were nothing more than bumpy little multivitamins. They are brambles, actually, related to the rose, tough plants that grow wild and bear fragile fruit. Not even a fruit, as it turns out, but a compendium that makes up each berry. Herbalists of the 16th century considered the bramble to be “a plant of Venus in Mars.” The house of Mars accounts for the thorns, and you can guess where Venus is in all of this. The greatest health benefits that berries dispense are, surely, attained in their procurement, which involves hiking, picking, and eating.

Even this year, when we Americans are racing down to places we don’t countenance (recession, repossession, retreat) there is still summer up north and Downeast. There are a lot of us living a brief pastoral, and the future with its uncertainties and fears is, temporarily, put aside. In this quick moment, time suspended, let us hope the rain stops so we can hike up the mountain and pick wild berries. If the wind picks up, we’ll go sailing, tacking back and forth out past the lighthouse and head in, wing-on-wing, in time for supper. And if you have been clever enough or just plain lucky and you happened to have picked berries before the weather, then you really ought to take this rainy morning and make Elizabeth’s raspberry crumble:

Elizabeth’s Crumble

(all amounts are approximate)

Mix together:

2q raspberries
1q black raspberries
1q wild blueberries

Toss with:

1 to 1&1/2 c turbinado sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c flour

Put mixture in buttered baking pan.

For topping combine:

2c flour
1c oats
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Cut in:
1 stick butter

Sprinkle on top of berry mixture to cover.
Bake at 375 for about 1/2 hour.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
Feeds 16.

John Huggins, Amagansett, New York, 2008, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York