The sun streams down through the rows of berry bushes, revealing glistening berries and intermingling with giggles as bigger and bigger patches of blackberries are found. Hands dart in, avoiding the prickly branches and beetles munching on the leaves. “How many containers have you filled? I have already gotten two!” my sister Zoe calls from further down the row, always wanting a competition. Wet grass clings to our feet as we happily search for the hidden berries inside the tangled mess of vines, popping a few in our mouths when the other isn’t looking. After cartons, and bellies (shh!), are full, we run inside to begin our project. A few raspberries at the farm! A crumble is a perfect treat to end a hot summer day. Juicy, crisp, and too sweet, it can be garnished with a scoop of cold, creamy vanilla ice cream or eaten plain. Though I love a good crumble in the winter, curled up on a couch in front of the fire with a book (click here to read my blog post about a delicious winter treat!), no one can beat a delicious summer crumble. A crumble tastes of humid summer days, a cool crisp breeze, a running stream. With one bite it pulls me away to previous happy summers, while making me feel content and lucky where I am. What reminds you of summer? Please, please, please leave a comment below! My family’s favorite crumble recipes are from Smitten Kitchen and Martha Stewart, but in my opinion, nothing is better than my sister’s summer crumble (inspired by these two recipes) that she whips together to create the perfect summer night. The beauty of a crumble is that it is very forgiving. It can contain any kind of fruit that you can dream of (my favorites are blackberries, blueberries, and peaches), with just a thickener (flour or cornstarch), a little bit of sugar (not too much!), and a topping of flour, sugar, salt, and butter. A crumble is like tie dying, any way it is created it will look beautiful. If you make this recipe, take a picture and send it to me! Ohh, those summer days. Although Zoe can make any recipe overly delicious, with this recipe the rest of us can at least can be assured that we can make a pretty good summer crumble. Here is Zoe’s recipe and happy baking: Zoe’s Summer Crumble (Inspired by Martha Stewart’s Peach Crumble) Yield: 12 small servings Time: 30 minutes Ingredients: Filling 7 cups of any fruit (I just made mine with blueberries and sour cherries–you can use frozen or fresh fruit) 6 teaspoons cornstarch or 4 tablespoons flour A scant 1/2 a cup sugar (or as little as 1/4 a cup, depending on how sweet your fruit is) A splash of lemon juice (it is okay if you don’t have this–I often leave it out) Heaping 1/2 teaspoon of salt Topping 5 tablespoons unsalted butter Scant 1/4 a cup brown sugar or 1/4 cup granulated sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon molasses 1 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt Directions Preheat the oven to 375 degrees For the filling: In a bowl, gently (so that you don’t mash the fruit) mix all the ingredients for the filling, flour/cornstarch, sugar, fruit, lemon juice, and salt. Pour fruit mixture into a 12″ by 8″ baking dish. For the topping: Cream the butter and brown sugar in an electric mixer for about two minutes at medium to high speed. Add salt and flour in a few batches. Mix until the dough starts to form a ball. Crumble the topping into little pieces over the fruit mixture. Bake for 40-50 minutes—if it looks like it is browning too quickly on top, cover with aluminum foil. It’s done when the fruit is bubbling and the topping has some color. A heaping 1/2 teaspoon of salt! Pouring the flour and salt into the fruit. Berries galore!!! Preheated to 375 degrees. Ready to bake… Putting it into the oven! Finished crumble! SaveSave
Knitting Socks and Learning from Someone Younger Than You
My fingers crept along, slowly following the pattern–wrapping the yarn, twisting, poking, prodding. My sister’s fingers flew. “You are still there?” she would say, teasingly, every few minutes. By the time I had finished the first row, she was at the fifth, by the time I was at the fifth, she was at the fifteenth. How embarrassing. What was I doing letting my younger sister tell me what to do, act like she is better than me?! And yet, here she was. Carefully guiding me, experimenting, correcting, laughing with me, at me. Who was I to pretend that I wasn’t having fun or that she wasn’t doing a perfect job? Zoe kindly–like always–helping me with my sock on a ferry. There is usually a bizarre discomfort that older siblings have when their younger sibling–or any younger person–starts teaching them something. I feel this discomfort sometimes and try my best to fight it. My sister, Zoe, and I have a wonderful relationship. We homeschooled together for 6 years and my parents mostly decided to pull me out of school so that we could spend more time together, resulting in a close relationship between us. However, children grow up these days with a strong distinction between ages. When we start school, we are separated by age into grades, almost never crossing in between. We are led to believe that older kids learn more complicated stuff, so they must clearly be more advanced, and therefore do not need the help of younger kids. In the homeschooling world, ages interlap often. My close friend group for most of my homeschooling time was made up of kids both four years older and younger than me. We were a group of varying ages, personalities, and experiences. The differences in our ages didn’t separate us, instead it enriched our friendships. Now that I am in school, I can feel myself slipping back into the mindset that I should not hang out with kids that are a different age than me and it impacts my opportunities for friendships at school and at home. When I push myself to break the barrier of age, the different stages that the kids I meet are in and the interests that come with them push me to think harder and be more compassionate, resulting in my greater happiness. When I think of Zoe as an equal, someone who I can learn from and grow with, I find myself growing in ways that I wouldn’t normally. Our personalities and interests overlap and twist together, like knitting, making something special. I finished my sock a couple of weeks ago. It is a little crooked in some places, has holes in others, and is in no way compared to Zoe’s pairs of socks, but it carries the air of a new skill. It has reminded me that I am not stuck to people only my age, but am able to learn from everyone. My finished sock! This summer, reach out to someone younger than you and let yourself learn from them. Whether it be your younger sibling or someone else that you know, try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Happy learning!
Circus Olympus and Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
By Wholtone [Public domain], from Wikimedia CommonsThe wooden doors loomed in front of us as we struggled to put aside the thought of what was on the other side. Blackness seeped in and the door swung open, cueing the circus music to blast and multicolored lights to shine on. “Who is ready for some theater?!” was cried and we burst out through the aisle and onto the stage. My hands are shaking uncontrollably and my teeth are chattering. Deep breaths. There is no going back now. What is the worst that could happen? And then it begins. For almost my whole life, when someone asked me to act in front of someone, a surge of intense emotions would overtake me and I would cry so hard that I wasn’t able to breathe, speak, or act in a reasonable way. These feelings used to come up when I had to speak to someone I didn’t know too well, be in a video, or even introduce myself in a new class. It slowly lessened and grew more intense for bigger things, like being asked to act, play my cello or piano in front of someone I didn’t know, and so on. It barred me and bars me from doing many things, making me feel uncomfortable and ending up with me not being able to do things that I should. Multiple times, these emotions hit me especially hard. When I was eleven, my cello teacher tried to convince me to play in a recital during one of my lessons. I slowly began to start to feel more and more trapped and when she asked if I wanted to play for someone who just walked in the door for her next lesson all the stress that was building up burst out. I froze and started crying uncontrollably, unable to stop myself. I ended up not participating in the recital. The play whirls by, I slowly start to get more comfortable. The glare of the lights dim, my hands slow their shaking and my teeth stop chattering, my fear dissipates into giddy excitement. The moments tick by, each one nearing the goal of the end, but the seconds stop feeling like minutes and more like seconds. It is the last scene, then my last line, then the end. I did it. I had broken a barrier that had held me back for my whole life, or had carved a hole to step through. I proved to myself that I could, that I did, and that I didn’t let myself be held back by something that made me uncomfortable. Have you ever thought that there is no chance that you could do something? Has something ever held you back from doing something? Have you ever then made yourself do it, or succeeded in something that you thought you couldn’t? If so, then leave a comment below! I would love to hear your experiences.
