berryal

Can you classify people by the type of berries they like to eat? I eat blackberries, which I developed a taste for when I lived in Seattle where they grew wild in profusion. At the height of the season I'd accompany a friend to harvest some and then she'd bake blackberry and apple pie.

B. eats blueberries. She puts them in her oatmeal in the morning. I don't eat blueberries: I have trouble with the concept of blue food.

Consequently berries of both kinds are on our weekly shopping list. For a couple of weeks now we've had trouble getting blueberries. B. wondered if they'd been scarfed up by people wanting to have red white and blue meals for the Fourth. But that week was a little early to be saving berries up that long for.

Whatever the reason, I went back out to another store and found the last two small containers of blueberries (we usually buy a large container) in the organic foods section. But this week, nada. Our regular Safeway was out, the larger supplemental one I often try was out, the nearby Luckys, not noted for its produce at any time, was out. It even had a notice that they were applying their sale price to raspberries on account of the shortage in blueberries.

I decided not to try the produce markets: they're good for large fruit like apples and peaches, but I don't recall having seen a lot of berries there.

Instead, I invested the time and gas money to drive to Lunardi's out in the south suburbs. As a different chain they might have their own distributor. And sure enough, plenty of containers of blueberries, with a label saying they were from Petaluma, a good farming town not far away.

So I came home with the blueberries, and also with a dinner's worth of the high-quality fresh crab cakes they do so well.