Blackberries

JUNE 1

The thrill of my success with the lamb chops sort of threw me for a loop and I didn’t quite try anything new for five days, opting instead to lie at home marathoning The West Wing. Which is, I think, a pretty valid decision.

Fate found me, however, at a restaurant with family for an early birthday celebration for my mom. This restaurant has a history involving my breaking free from my picky eating. I’m, as may be apparent, a big breadbasket guy and the breadbasket here contained only mini blueberry muffins. I love corn muffins, I love bran muffins, I even love banana muffins (depending on how nutty they are), but I had never eaten blueberry muffins. Last year, the basket arrived and I turned down the offer of a muffin when my then-7-year-old cousin turned to me with a scornful eye and said, “Dan. Just eat the muffin.”

I ate it. I liked it. Ironically, he’s probably more of a picky eater than I am. But then again, he’s eight and I’m almost twenty.

Anyway, this year, I ordered my old familiar favorite: the Grand Marnier Challah French Toast. Cause like, why not?

Feeling in the celebratory spirit, I neglected to specify that I don’t like things on things. Let me make that clearer: when I order things, an important thing to mention is that if there are things on the thing, I’d rather not have the thing on the thing but perhaps on the side. For example, the thing on the thing in this case was berries and I would rather have the berries on the side than on the French toast. (Seeing, of course, as how I don’t like things on things.)

I’m not a huge berry person. Let me clarify. According to Wikipedia, a berry is any fruit with seeds that has pulp from a single ovary which may be superior or inferior. Well, really. Though I would certainly never be so coarse as to insinuate that one ovary was superior to another, of the list of berries listed on Wikipedia, I’m really only into bananas and grapes. In terms of berries with the name berry, I really just like strawberries. Wikipedia ruins everything though and it turns out strawberries aren’t berries, they’re aggregate accessory fruits. So there.

(The strawberry tree is a berry, however. #treesareberriestoo)

As a child, I came up with this joke: What’s a fruit’s favorite bridge? The Tri-Berry bridge. Which is now the RFK bridge. So never mind.

The Grand Marnier Challah French Toast was topped with blueberries, blackberries, and strawaggregateaccessories. Having already eaten five blueberry mini-muffins at that meal, I figured that was enough blueberry. (I have tried blueberries in the past, but they’re not really my thing.) So my new food would be blackberries.

They’re good. They kind of taste like blueberries, but more little pieces which are a little chunkier and sharper. I don’t really have many words. They’re fine. They’re blackberries.

Guess what though? Blackberries aren’t berries. They’re aggregates. I don’t think they’re even aggregate accessories. Aggregates are composed of small drupelets by the way. As are we all.

By the way, Wikipedia also shares that old chuckle-worthy saying, “blackberries are red when they’re green.” Which is supposedly funny because when blackberries are not yet ripe (=green), their color is red. Hahahohoho. With that joke, my Tri-berry bridge joke, and $199.99, I could purchase a BlackBerry for my very own.