Bilingual life and more

It has not smelled this good in my house for a long time. I started the apple butter yesterday evening and it cooks overnight and all day today. There is the sweet scent of apples, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg (I could not leave that out). I usually don’t like food smells in my house, but that does change at Christmas time.

The other morning Emily had a slice of bread with jam for breakfast. Her favorite is strawberry, but I thought she also liked blackberry, so I made one with each. Well, she was not happy, and even a good story about my blackberry childhood experiences could not make it better. Does somebody else here have experiences with Lilly’s pickiness? Here is my little story:

When I was growing up, we had this huge blackberry bush in our garden, right between the stony path and the gray cement garage wall. It was one of those thornless blackberry bushes and it had grown, weeping over the front so that my older brother, Jochen, and I had enough space to have a little hiding place behind it. We played there often, but the best time was when the berries were ripe. Those bushes produce big, ripe berries, about a quarter in size, pitch black and mouthwatering juicy sweet. There was always an abundance of blackberries at our house. I loved them fresh of the bush the best – even better sitting in our little hiding place! Even after giving buckets full of berries away or trading them for other neighbors fruit, we still had so much that for a few months, everything seemed to have blackberries in it – cakes, waffles with blackberry sauce and then jam to last for the rest of the year and yes, the blackberry liquor (apparently, I have gotten the liquor making gene from my grandmother). Needless to say, I was not the biggest fan of blackberries anymore. Still, I would loved them right of the bush as there is something special about picking your own and eating it right then and there. Years later, now, when I sit at the table, tasting my daughters blackberry jam bread, I think of the blackberry bush and all the wonderful times we had there.

Anna and Lilly were sitting there listening. No peep from them. Munching, eyes wide open. But, did Lilly try some blackberry jam after my story? Nope ….