Berries for Breakfast

weather occurring outside the kitchen door. "We are what we eat," Lambert is telling us, and he certainly is right. Part of our self-definition as Americans or Appalachians has to do with what we take into our systems three times a day. But of course that can be bad news as well as good news. Take bacon grease, for example. Maybe our ancestors did use it in almost everything they cooked, but now we know that too much of it can kill us. And what used to have to be done to vegetables (before refrigerators and freezers) was downBerries for Breakfast I went berry picking early this morning. I had not meant to pick berries when I started my stroll down this fog-shrouded hill. Watching carefully where I stepped to avoid the slippery slate, I spied-what joy!a ripe dewberry and another and another! "Oh, berries for breakfast today, berries for breakfast ," I sang. Oh, I thought, I'll have such a lovely surprise for Harry. I'll serve the berries in crystal bowls; I'll use the damask cloth and fold the napkins just so, and we'll talk only of pleasantries. Even kings and queens, I thought, have never been served a breakfast such as this. Not even guessing that berries were ripe, since there had been little rain this year, I had not brought my berry pail, so I cupped my hand to carry the luscious fruit. The first berry was plump and juicy-I almost ate it on the spot. The second was dry and hard so I tossed it for the birds. The third was only seed, and I dropped it for the ants to eat. I looked for more. The vine was clean. I had picked it bare. right criminal. So get your recipes from Joy of Cooking or the many excellent regional cookbooks published by Southern Living magazine. Even Lambert would not want to return to the restrictive and sometimes unhealthy diet of the "good old days." But our pasts are worth remembering. Some parts are even worth trying to reproduce. Lambert's value is that he makes us look once again at much of what was important in our own childhoods. -Harry Robie Confident that I would find more, I went on down the hill, still cradling my one plump berry-on down to the bend, where last spring I had seen many vines in bloom. Disappointment on disappointmentnot another ripe berry did I find, not even red ones. All green and hard they were. And I had so fancied serving dear Harry a bowl of sweet fresh fruit. Nonplussed, I dimbed back up that wicked hill, retrieved that berry I'd left for ants to eat, blew off whatever germs it held, and went back to the house. There I busied myself in the kitchen. I brushed the crumbs from the checkered cloth, put the berries in two chipped saucers, and plopped them on the table. There! Our breakfast. Two berries, one for each of us. Harry took one look and said, "This is it!" Then he, being plump, took the plump one, and I, being . . . well, I got the seedy. But this I know: Not even kings and queens have ever been served a breakfast such as this. by Virginia Ferrill Piland _*_* 66 ...