Reflections on the First Week of Winter – Not My Mother-in-Law’s Fruit Salad

Wells Wood Fruit Salad

Perched on the middle rung of my husband’s five-foot stepladder, I reached over my head into Douglas fir branches. Above me sunshine peaked through the clouds on the mild August 30^th afternoon. Below me, Spence steadied the ladder with both hands so it wouldn’t tip on the uneven ground of the evergreen nursery. I grabbed a wild grape, and a fir branch grabbed my floppy garden hat.

“When you write the garden summary for this year,” Spence said squinting at the wild grape vines growing twenty feet high into the fir, “it’s fruit year.”

I rescued my hat and dropped the grape into a picking bucket on the top step. “Ooh! I can make Christmas fruit salad with just Wells Wood fruit.”

Spence chortled. “That’s planning far ahead.”

Not far enough. If I’d thought of using Wells Wood fruit last June, I could have frozen the five cherries that ripened after I baked the cherry pie. [See “What’s a country girl do on the seventh day of summer?” June 27, 2018]

Five cherries wouldn’t make much difference. You’re fretting about Priscilla.

My mother-in-law made fruit salad for Christmas Day every year.

And it took twenty years to convince her to let you make the fruit salad.

I almost failed.

You passed her test. Forget it.

Forget it? Hardly.

Twenty-five years ago on Christmas Eve afternoon, I reached into our cramped Cleveland Heights refrigerator to pull out apples, oranges, and tangerines. Then I lifted bananas and a pineapple off the top of the refrigerator. Setting everything on the counter, I shrieked. “I forgot the frozen strawberries!”

My husband rushed upstairs from the basement, put a hand on my shoulder, and surveyed the counter. “You’ve got plenty of fruit. You don’t need strawberries.”

“Yes. I do.” I slammed the cutting board on the counter next to the fruit. “When your mother agreed to let me make the fruit salad this year, she stipulated, ‘Don’t forget the frozen strawberries. It’s not fruit salad without frozen strawberries.’”

Spence rubbed my shoulder. “She can do without strawberries for one year.”

“But she’ll never trust me again.” I pressed my face against Spence’s chest.

Our son Charlie and daughter Ellen, both in their late teens, hurried into the standing-room-only kitchen. “What’s wrong with Mom?” they said in unison.

Spence hugged me with one arm and rubbed my back with his other hand. “She forgot the strawberries.”

Everbearing Strawberry

“So? Drive to the store and get some,” Charlie said in his practical voice.

“It’s Christmas Eve.” I let go of Spence, grabbed a tissue, and blew my nose. “Stores won’t be open.”

“Of course they will. It’s nineteen ninety-three.” Charlie held out his hand. “Give me the keys. Ellen and I will go.”

“Make sure they’re frozen strawberries,” I called when they stepped outside.

The next morning in Priscilla’s Pittsburgh kitchen, I handed her a large mixing bowl covered with aluminum foil.

She harrumphed, lifted the foil, and peeked inside. “At least you remembered the strawberries.” Handing the bowl back to me, she pointed to the kitchen doorway. “Put the bowl on the dining room table and get a serving spoon from the china cabinet drawer.”

Every subsequent Christmas Eve, the Priscilla fruit-salad-strawberry episode has reverberated through my mind while I cut fruit.

But this Christmas Eve I didn’t cut a single fruit. I opened freezer bags, dumped the spring and summer Wells Wood fruit harvest into bowls, and defrosted the pre-cut pieces in the micro wave.

Strawberries from the patch I’d weeded when a high-stepping black Morgan pulled an empty sulky down West Creek Road. [See “Strawberry Surprise” April 1, 2018]

 

Wild red raspberries and blackberries that I rescued before ladders crushed the bushes while handymen power washed and stained the front of the log house. [See “Ladder Work” July 15, 2018]

Blueberries I’d picked in abundance under their ghost tents. [See “Garden Ghosts” June 26, 2016]

Rhubarb which my friend Jennifer taste-tested and pronounced ready-to-pick. [See “Rhubarb Rhapsody” September 2, 2018]

Apples from the Wolf River tree that the Pittsburgh Wells family helped harvest. [See “Addy’s Big Adventure (Part 1)” September 7, 2018]

Wild grapes because our domestic grape plants still hadn’t produced in the six-year-old arbor.

By Christmas morning, strawberries and raspberries had tinted apple slices red. Blueberries, blackberries, and wild grapes added contrasting color. Chunks of green rhubarb made the whole salad look festive. I filled a glass compote with the mixture and took my first bite of Wells Wood fruit salad.

With traditional fruit salad, I get the flavor of apple followed by the flavor of orange followed by the flavor of blueberry. Wouldn’t eating each fruit separately taste better?

Not a problem with my nontraditional fruit salad. The smooshed fruit blended so that every bite tasted the same. Only the texture differed―tough wild grape skins and stringy fresh-frozen rhubarb. Instead of chew, swallow, insert-another-spoonful when eating the traditional version, I chewed and spit.

Next Christmas morning I’ll eat fruit salad again―my nontraditional fruit salad. I’ll savor the mixed fruit flavor of an all Wells Wood fruit harvest. And even with frozen strawberries, I’ll contemplate Priscilla harrumphing at the smooshed fruit and the spit-inducing. chewy texture.

Bushel of Wolf River Apples