When our family decided to stay at a farm in rural New Hampshire as part of our New England vacation, I immediately took to the internet to research the area around Newport, NH where we’d be staying. Among the historic buildings and covered bridges, one listing caught my attention: Blueberry picking! Whatever else we did, I knew this topped my list of options for a family activity. Blueberries are my all-time favorite fruit. In fact, at my former job at the American Heart Association’s Children’s Museum, every employee’s name tag stated their favorite fruit or vegetable under their name, so mine said “Sarah Blueberries”–which always led kids on my tours to ask if “Blueberries” was my last name. I wish! Wouldn’t that be perfect for a nutritionist? Maybe I can convince my husband we should consider a name change.

As fruits (and foods in general) go, you can’t get much healthier than blueberries. They’re packed with antioxidants, vitamins K and C, and contain a surprisingly high amount of fiber. (Check out this post of mine over on Brit + Co to read more about berry health benefits!) I also find them super versatile and delicious–as you may have realized from the many blueberry recipes on this blog!

Bartlett’s Blueberry Farm came highly recommended by the owners of the farm where we were staying, and it happened to be the closest place to pick blueberries, so we set off on our outing on a beautiful sunny day. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by the lovely lady who runs the farm at a tented stand featuring tons of blueberry-based products.

The owner explained that we had access to the farm’s enormous swath of blueberry bushes, with our choice of picking to fill either a large bucket or smaller buckets. Since our stay in New Hampshire would be brief, we chose the smaller buckets, which adorably (and conveniently) hung on strings around our necks while picking.

With that, we were off to picking!

Embarrassingly, before this experience, I couldn’t have told you what a blueberry bush even looked like. They’re not exactly springing up on every corner in Phoenix, where I’ve lived almost my entire life. Actually, I’ve only ever known one person who succeeded in making them grow in the desert, and he was a horticulturist. So I was pleased to learn that blueberries grow in bunches on pretty, thorn-less, eye-level bushes.

Bartlett’s Farm boasted several varieties of blueberries. At the end of each row was a marker designating its variety, such as Duke, Nelson, and Earlibue. We tasted several and did notice a difference–some were sweeter, some tarter. To me, blueberries have always just been blueberries, so it was interesting to learn that there are subtle differences between different plants.

Picking the blueberries proved to be a very simple task (not nearly as arduous as apple picking, with all the reaching and pulling and spiky lacrosse stick-like plucking tools). With plenty of ripe berries in easy reach and no thorns to poke us, the berries practically fell off the branches into our buckets. We all just kept our eyes peeled for the bluest fruits, knowing they’d be sweetest, and avoided any green or magenta-colored ones.

Sometimes they even popped off in perfect little clusters, like this..

All in all, we probably spent 45 minutes picking before we got our fill (well, more than our fill) of blueberries. I don’t actually recall the price per pound, but I do know that for the amount pictured–I’m guessing at least two pounds–we paid only $6.60. A pretty stellar deal for fresh, local blueberries, even if we picked them ourselves.

If you’re ever in western New Hampshire, check out Bartlett’s Blueberry Farm!

And for more blueberry inspiration, check out these recipes:

Red, White, and Blueberry French Toast Casserole

Fresh Blueberry Ice Cream

Easy Blueberry Jam

Whole Grain Blueberry Orange Muffins

Lighter Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars

Blueberry Scones

Christmas seems like a long time ago now, but that’s where this story begins. Back in December, as I was assembling my Christmas list (like a NORMAL person–who are these nonchalant gift receivers who say, “Just get me whatever you think I’d like!”?), I had been chatting with my co-workers about the hot new trend of boxes. Yes, boxes. Not plain old boxes, or simple gift boxes, but the kind of subscription boxes that arrive in the mail monthly with special, interesting goodies. You may have heard of examples like Stitch Fix, Birchbox, or The PMS Package (yes, it is what you think it is).

Being a foodie, I knew the one box I wanted to add to my Christmas list: Universal Yums. This box service caters to the culinarily adventurous, sending gift boxes of snacks from a different country each month. Chupa chups from Mexico? Haribo gummies from Germany? Sign me up! (Just nothing with crickets, please.)

When Christmas rolled around, my brother was kind enough to gift me with a month of Universal Yums. My box arrived in January full of edible presents from…drumroll, please…Greece! After taking a moment to give thanks that it wasn’t from somewhere extremely exotic to me, like Vietnam (see cricket aversion above), I sliced open my “Yum Yum Box” with gusto.

Not sure who was more excited, my 6-year-old or me.

The Yum Yum Box includes at least 12 snacks (other Universal Yums packages come with anywhere from 6 to 20+ goodies). Here’s what the haul looked like unboxed:

A variety of sweet and savory, it boasted oregano chips, a sesame-almond bar, cookies flavored with must (a kind of grape juice), olives, chewy fruit candies, something called halva (which my husband, who has a Greek aunt, recognized as a snack, but which looked more like cement to me), bread chips, a cream-filled croissant, and several chocolate candy bars.

For my first snack of choice, I dug into the chocolate (obviously), opting for a Triplo bar.

The Triplo bar needs to hit the U.S., like, immediately. Without a doubt, it would be a huge success. A three-humped chocolate-caramel mixture tops a wafer base, making this some perfect amalgam of Milky Way and Kit Kat. I’ve been scouring the internet for where to buy these in bulk every since. The other chocolate items in the Yum Yum Box were similarly delicious.

The sesame-almond bar I tried next certainly did NOT resemble any snack native to the U.S. Containing just sesame seeds, honey, and almonds, it sure could teach American processed snacks a thing or two about the goodness of simplicity. To this Western lady, its flavor was distinctly foreign–but enjoyably so–especially with the knowledge it was comprised of only three ingredients.

 

This brings me to another element I appreciated about the Yum Yum Box: with standard FDA-regulated nutrition facts on each food item, I wasn’t left to decipher nutrition information from Greek in kilojoules.

Additionally, a fun little booklet accompanied the box, providing a bit of background on each snack, as well as some games and riddles to solve, indicating where next month’s box would come from. This mini-magazine added to the intrigue and festive feeling of the experience.

Since my box arrived in January, I’ve gradually made my way through the dozen or so items it delivered, loving some, disliking others, feeling indifferent toward a few. Actually, it’s not quite true that I’ve made my way through all of them. I have yet to try the halva (which I still think looks more like a gray brick from some Communist-era demolition site than a desirable on-the-go snack), and I eventually threw out the cream-filled croissant on the grounds that any cream that can survive a trip across the planet and two months in my pantry is a cream I don’t want to eat.

This highlights the primary drawback I see with Universal Yums’ model: every food sent is, by necessity, processed. For obvious reasons, you can’t exactly send fresh fruits and vegetables or home-cooked meals via international mail. Still, as a nutritionist, I can’t help but hesitate to completely embrace a monthly celebration of processed food.

Final word: would I get Universal Yums again? As a gift, yes, any time! But personally, even though I enjoy trying new foods and the feeling that I can travel the globe with my mouth, I’m not quite up to spending $14-39/month to do so. Plus, I honestly don’t think I have the appetite for so many unusual snacks every month. There would always be ones I’m just not adventurous enough to eat (though it could be fun weirding out whoever runs the canned food drive at my kids’ school by donating shrimp chips from Thailand or beet candies from Ukraine). Regardless, my Universal Yums experience was definitely exciting and novel, and I’d be curious to see what a box from another country would look like.

Would you try an international snack box service? Or have you already? Tell me about it!

Normally, I have a bit of an aversion to food memoirs. Often they’re cloyingly sappy, with too-tender tales of lessons both culinary and clichéd on grandmother’s knee. Or they make improbable leaps from food to philosophy: “As I kneaded the dough with my fingers, I was reminded that life’s possibilities are always at our fingertips.” Then again, maybe my distaste for food memoirs has to do with a secret jealousy that people out there are writing whole books about their relationship with food. Entirely possible.

So when I picked up a copy of Jessica Fechtor’s Stir at my local library, I wasn’t really prepared to like it.

Truth be told, it wasn’t the food aspect that made me toss Stir onto my pile of books for checkout in the first place. What drew me in was instead the fact that Fechtor’s story centers on recovery from a brain aneurysm that rocked her life in her late 20s. I’ll confess: I love reading or watching anything that showcases the gruesome or bizarre. My husband tells me I have the Netflix queue of someone planning a string of axe murders. So, brain aneurysm? Yes, please!

I toted Stir along with me on our road trip to Disneyland this past week, and didn’t even need the drive to and from California to read it. Forty-eight hours was all it took to polish off this immersive narrative.

Unlike the many food memoirs I’ve read before, Stir resonated with me. Fechtor manages to make deep, true statements about food’s role in bringing her back to her “normal” self after her aneurysm–without clunking sentimentality. Her eye for describing her own experiences struck me as probing and sincere, and her intelligence comes through on every page. It’s no surprise she’s A PhD candidate in Jewish literature at Harvard. Plus, her descriptions of food are nothing short of poetry, like this passage about a macaroon:

“The Hi-Rise almond macaroon is plump and squat, a round, rosy cookie with a whole almond pressed into its belly and dusted with powdered sugar. Squeeze, and and the crisp outer crust sinks into the chewy center.”

Does that not make you perfectly picture (and want to eat) a macaroon?

Several times, coming upon recipes featured at the end of nearly every chapter, I suddenly realized my need for whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, butter almond cake, cherry clafoutis. It made complete sense that these baked goods would serve as comfort food in a time of the author’s suffering and recovery. (Then again, some recipes were way out of my league, or would involve hours of preparation. To each her own.)

As someone who has had bizarre, hit-you-out-of-nowhere health issues, I must say I also found Fechtor’s life-altering surgeries and hospital stays relatable. Her resilience is incredible. There’s no way I could have responded to losing half my vision and a large chunk of my skull with anything like her optimism.

My primary criticism of the book is for its title. It seems a few more descriptive words could have better expressed the depths of Fechtor’s experience than simply Stir.

Overall, however, I highly recommend reading Fechtor’s well-told journey. Sometimes we could all use a jolt of gratitude that, whatever our troubles, at least most of us don’t require brain surgery–and a reminder of the many wonderful gifts food can bring under any circumstances.