A Set Back

I had this grand scheme last night.

Here was my thinking: I could magically displace any squeamishness Audrey has about the core ingredients of a particular dish (i.e. warm fruit), and she would happily lap it up with abandon, if she made said dish herself.

+ I wanted something sweet, and I’ve recently instituted a rule that we can only eat sweets if we make them ourselves -- from scratch (in an attempt to both eat fewer sweets and curb our serious addiction to boxed Ghirardelli double chocolate brownie mix...)

So while Millie and Bryan were happily ensconced in her room playing some combination of princess and the hokey pokey (don’t ask), Audrey and I set out to make berry crumble.

We sort of improvised our way through it, forgoing a formal recipe, and true to plan, I had her do almost all of the work while I guided her through the process. I also took this time to tell her about the blog… how I wanted to cook together more and for her try new foods and then write about them so we could remember it all when we’re older.

She was way into it, and I was positive she would love the crumble; you can see where this is going, no?

We let it cool, made some lightly sweetened loosely whipped cream to pile on top, and she dove in. Friends, it was way, way worse that the great guacamole debacle. She completely freaked out. It was epic: the gagging, the crying, the pleading for water… From her totally overblown reaction, you would have thought I’d just fed her the contents of her sister’s diaper.

“Don’t worry mom”, she managed to say after recovering from her meltdown extraordinaire. “You can just say I didn’t like it on the blog…”

She didn’t like it.

But I did… A lot.

Berry Crumble

• One cup of organic blueberries
• One cup of organic raspberries
• ½ tsp of fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp of sugar in the raw
• 1 tbsp whole wheat flour
• ½ cup oatmeal (not quick oats)
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup crushed pecans or walnuts
• ½ stick of butter chilled and diced into cubes

Pre-heat oven to 350.

In one bowl mix berries, lemon juice, sugar in the raw and whole wheat flour gently with a wooden spoon or spatula, evenly distribute berry mixture into 4 ramekins.

In another bowl mix together oatmeal, all-purpose flour, cinnamon, brown sugar and nuts, add in chilled butter cubes and crumble together with fingers, cover the berries in each ramekin with the crumble mixture.

Place ramekins on a cookie sheet and bake for approx 30 minutes or until bubbly, let cool and serve with vanilla ice cream or lightly sweetened, loosely whipped cream.