Photo @madeleine diaries I have been back in the city heat after a welcome long weekend, which was decided at the last minute and did not go exactly according to plan, but still ended up fulfilling its purpose - after a couple of days when it wasn’t clear it would. We drove up to Lake Champlain in Vermont on Friday and arrived in the rain, barely managing to find a table at a restaurant that turned out to be mediocre, if not genuinely bad. The rain, as well as disappointing meals, continued for most of Saturday, and I was beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t have just stayed in the scorching city heat, contenting ourselves with margaritas and Netflix in the evenings, playgrounds and sprinklers for the kids during the day. Indeed, the whole experience bore little resemblance with the pictures I had in mind since last Spring, when we visited the area on Mother’s Day, in the middle of the pandemic.
We had rented a house during lockdown further South in Vermont, where my husband has many relatives, and on our last weekend before returning to New York we decided to go back to the lake, where we had spent a weekend when my older children were little and I was barely pregnant with our third. It had been a grey and cold holiday weekend as well and we had not been able to swim in the lake. But I still had a fond memory of the place, where the kids had met a girl who was significantly older but still willing to play all sorts of silly games with them. She lived in Montpelier, Vermont (these European cities names in the middle of nowhere never cease to amaze me) with her mother, a nurse who never alluded to her daughter’s father. We had befriended them and had dinner with them the following Winter in yet another Vermont village, that time with our 8-month-old son.
When we went back to Lake Champlain last May the place was deserted. We drove to the hotel grounds and it looked like everything had been abandoned forever, a kind of Sleeping Beauty village with the same empty, melancholic eeriness that we encountered everywhere we went during our Vermont stay. We later took a short hike along the shore and were almost the only family there. It was still cold for the season but the sky was perfectly blue, and the light so pure that it felt like the world had just awakened. The children were in good spirits, I took a few pictures that I ended up not liking but I was happy to be back in that place I had enjoyed a few years before, and I couldn’t have asked for a better pandemic Mother’s Day.
I was hoping to rekindle this flame by going back a third time last weekend, but I soon realized that my hopes were built on pure nostalgia and that the hotel would not live up to my somewhat unrealistic expectations. The weather, the food, everything seemed to conspire against us and I felt uncomfortable among the large family reunions that were taking place for the first official post-Covid holiday weekend of the season. One group of seemingly innumerable children was wearing bright red t-shirts that read “Cousin Crew”, with their name in the front and a number in the back. From what I could gather there were 16 of them, number 16 being a smiley baby boy and number 1, I assume, the older teenager of the group, which I never got to see. On the Fourth of July, that same group, as well as most of the clientele, dressed in the colors of the American flag, from subtle tri-color nuances to more explicit “Freedom” messaging on the back of sweatshirts, and our family was one of the few not donning a star-spangled-banner- inspired outfit. Although I became an American citizen exactly ten years ago and have spent many a Fourth-of-July in this country, I don’t remember feeling as estranged and out of place as I did last Sunday. Never in France would anyone dress so conspicuously in revolutionary colors on Bastille Day (at least as far as I remember, as, with the exception of last year, I haven’t spent a Bastille Day in France for over twenty years) and the whole situation seemed to me slightly absurd.
My sour mood lasted until the evening. The sky had cleared up and everybody started gathering for the traditional barbecue. Tables had been set on a pier and a stretch of grass overlooking the lake, children and adults started arriving in their tri-color outfits, but I found them charming this time. The parents were smiling and making casual talk, and soon a group of kids, including my five-year-old son, started climbing a tree while the teenagers improvised a game of Base-Ball . By dessert everyone was playing in the grass or on the beach, my children throwing mudpies into the water until sunset with a boy they had just befriended. They had no memories of the place, nothing to compare it to, no pre-conceived notion of social decorum and for them the evening was pure joy. This is what I ended up feeling as well and when we left the next day after a sunny morning at the beach playing with wooden boats, my heart felt perfectly contented and grateful for this true post-pandemic Independence Day.
As for food, as I mentioned earlier, this wasn’t the highlight of our stay and another point of unfavorable comparison with what our experience had been in the past. But the same way that the weekend was saved by an evening barbecue by the lake, our culinary experience of it was salvaged by a single item that was on offer every morning at breakfast. While all the pastries and eggs were entirely forgettable, a large porcelain ramequin bearing the same red, white and blue colors as our fellow customers immediately caught my attention. It was a bowl of seemingly macerated berries, not a compote but just the fruit gently squashed and oozing a red, purplish juice. Mixed with the creamy yogurt that was served alongside it, it ended up being the perfect summer breakfast, and something I will definitely be eating daily for the next few weeks. I had never seen berries prepared that way before and I had to look it up when I got home. Indeed I found many occurrences of these “macerated berries”. Some recipes are very simple, just calling for a bit of sugar and lemon juice, other will add a splash of alcohol such as Grand Marnier or even Limoncello. I went with lemon, sugar and mint for my version but tried it with a few drops of Grand Marnier and found it plenty satisfying as well.
For a more decadent, dessert-like option, you could add some heavy cream to the yogurt and whip them together. Pure whipped cream with vanilla is another fine dessert option, whatever strikes your fancy.
Macerated berries
INGREDIENTS
FOR THE BERRIES
· 1 lb strawberries, hulled and halved (or quartered if very large)
· 10 oz (300 g) raspberries
· 10 oz (300 g) blackberries
· 10 oz (300 g) blueberries
· 1/4 cup granulated sugar
One tablespoon Lemon juice and/or a dash of alcohol such as Grand Marnier or Cointreau. Mint
FOR THE GREEK YOGURT WHIPPED CREAM
· 1/4 cup granulated sugar
· 2/3 cup cold heavy whipping cream
· 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
· 2/3 cup Greek yogurt
INSTRUCTIONS
FOR THE BERRIES
In a large bowl, combine about 1/2 cup each of the strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.
Add the sugar and mash with a potato masher (or fork) until the sugar dissolves. Add the lemon juice and Grand Marnier, if using Gently stir in the remaining whole berries.
Let sit at room temperature, tossing occasionally, for about 30 minutes (or refrigerate for up to 2 hours).
FOR THE GREEK YOGURT/ WHIPPED CREAM
Place the sugar, cream and vanilla in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat at medium speed until the cream holds stiff peaks. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the yogurt until incorporated. You can also just use Greek yogurt for breakfast. For breakfast I think my favorite option would be “fromage blanc”, the thick, French equivalent of Greek yogurt. I used to find it at Zabar’s but haven’t seen it there in many years and haven’t been able to find it anywhere else in the city.
To serve, divide the berries among 6 serving bowls and spoon the cream mixture over top.
You can also serve a big bowl of yogurt and a bowl of berries buffet-style, for everybody to dig in at breakfast.
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