The Secret Strawberry Bush

Meredith Ashton

Memoir Piece

2 October 2016

The Secret Strawberry Bush

It’s dark here, under the belly of the yellow slide. I squeeze three little fruits in my left hand, careful not to squish them between my fingers. Mom doesn’t like it when I get stains on my clothes. I push one into my mouth, and I let it sit on my tongue, licking off every particle of sugar before chewing and swallowing. The sweet juice is cool against the summer’s heat. I toss the bent green stem into the grass, secretly hoping that one day my very own strawberry bush will grow here.

I have been consumed by food my entire life. From sneaking sugar-coated strawberries under my play set on lazy summer afternoons to experimenting with my own cooking in college, I have developed my criteria for the perfect meal. Food is a fundamental connection between individuals and the land from which we harvest it. I long for food that sustains me on a spiritual level, as well as a physical one. Storied food, shared from farm to fork, across kitchen tables and stovetops—this, this is what I desire.

The food of my childhood was healthy and handpicked. I remember long car rides to the farm co-op with my mom. We drove down winding roads with windmills and cows. The cows, despite their perpetual lethargy, were always a particularly exciting find during the journey. The farm was mostly a place where I could “look but not touch.” My mom brought me along to help her carry the bags because “that’s why she had children.” I didn’t mind too much. The best part about the brown paper bags that the grizzled old farmer handed us, (I never could remember his name, but he definitely wore overalls, which was almost more exciting than the cows) were that the contents were a surprise. I loved peering into the sacks and seeing the stacks of red-ripened tomatoes; the kind I could snap off the green vine and eat like an apple, red juice dribbling down my chin. The only possible garnish was a sprinkle of sea salt. Anything else would ruin the light crunch of their crisp skin, and the gush of their juicy insides spilling seeds and juice into my waiting mouth. One time, our bags were full of radishes. Radishes. I asked my mom, what you do with radishes? For the next two weeks, I discovered that you can, in fact, incorporate radishes into dinner every single night. A salad garnished with radishes, tortilla soup with radishes, steamed radishes and peas, radish crostini, radish slaw, braised radishes, radishes snuck into sandwiches, and, when all else failed, a small pile of radishes served raw as a side. The sight of the offending crimson-red vegetable makes me queasy to this day.

I continued the tradition of food adventuring my first year of college. Our first month, already thoroughly disappointed with the cafeteria’s “vegetarian options” which consisted of slabs of undercooked tofu slathered in different pungent sauces, my roommate and I resolved to trek to the Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market. We left our cozy little cubicle of a dorm and ventured out into the great unknown that was the City of Kalamazoo. Armed with my phone’s GPS and two terribly misguided senses of direction, we embarked on our quest. While there weren’t any cows lounging on the side of the road, we did see beautiful old homes with white-wrapped porches, a smattering of churches from every denomination, and an empty city park. The Market itself was more impressive (and the fact that we discovered it after only getting lost twice, even more so). It was a particularly chilly fall day and my thin windbreaker and running tights did little to protect me from the frigid wind. The covered stalls created a large square, encircling a central area in which there were vendors selling beeswax candles, hand-knit scarves and hats, donuts fried in boiling oil, and a booth with a dazzling array of multicolored salsas. I bought dusty red sweet potatoes and a large onion from a man (also in overalls!) missing quite a few teeth, and a wooden crate full of fresh apples from two twin brothers in matching flannels. There was a very nice Asian woman who tried to sell me some ginger herbal tea, but I managed to politely refuse. This was my element—plunging my numb hands into bins of produce to examine each carrot before purchase and then shaking hands with the same farmer who’d just pulled the leafy vegetable from the ground days before.

This is food with a connection. And as I don’t see myself donning a pair of overalls in the near future, it’s the closest thing I’ll have to really knowing from where my food comes. And that doesn’t mean that I subsist solely on freshly picked carrots and radishes; my mom taught me that everything in life is about balance. And knowing that your food was cooked with love is even more satisfying than haggling with scantily-toothed farmers.

If I had to choose one dish for my Last Meal, it would be my mom’s homemade mac & cheese, but only if they let her make it for me. It’s my comfort food. My guiltiest pleasure. And, if I haven’t made this explicitly obvious yet, it’s damn good. I remember slowly whisking together milk and flour as my mom tossed in at least ten different cheese into the pot, scavenged from whatever we had left in the fridge. I stole a nibble of the mozzarella when she turned her back. It was my job to whisk the cheese into a roux without letting it burn. The American cheese was my favorite to watch. It would slowly dissolve, turning from solid to liquid with a turn of my whisk, disappearing under the creamy folds of the sauce just like magic. I remember watching the layers of thick spiral pasta with the cheese flowing over them, encasing each noodle in a thick coating of orange sauce. And my mom hand-beating the saltines into fine crumbs and then, with a finger to her lips, pouring a small tablespoon of butter over the top. It was all a secret; hers and mine.