Family Recipes and Memories: Blackberry Cooking

Nothing catches my eye quicker than a dish made with blackberries!

While browsing through my genealogy blogging group, I stopped on a fellow bloggers post from “Ancestors in Aprons“… I just love the name of her blog! It was a picture of a blackberry pie that caught my eye… and in my mind I could almost smell it! Yum… Yum! It was that post which sparked me to write about my grandmother and her “blackberry” pies and jam… and the stories I’ve been told through the years!

While I don’t have many memories of my grandmother, Ola (Askew) McKinley… I do remember the many jars of blackberry jam she kept on the kitchen counter waiting to come home with me! As a young girl, it was always the first thing I looked for when we arrived, and the last thing I grabbed…

While in Vegas, one does hope to meet celebrities of a certain calibre. Its almost a given. I mean, in the time that my sister and I stayed at the MGM Grand they hosted the Latin Grammy Awards and I am still convinced that I rode the lift with Jennifer Lopez (apparently it was a very convincing impersonator but whatever).

Anyway, I’m sure most of us would like to see celebrities but are we really fully prepared in the event that such a momentous occasion actually occurs?

Never fear, I am here to tell you exactly how to increase the likelihood of meeting one, what to expect, what to do and what not to to do. Are you ready for this?

First of all, its all about location, location, location.

If you want to see celebrities, be where the action’s happening. Do research. Where do they eat? What nightclubs do…

My old boss once told me that one of my greatest strengths is my ability to think of the most outlandish and craziest ideas and then have that idea become a reality. She says that I work like I have my head in the clouds most of the time, and I come down to earth and get on with the business of making things happen.

I suppose I’ve always been a very optimistic person. I’ve been fortunate enough to have an easy and happy childhood. Even when things seemed difficult, life always had a way of sorting things out with or without my help.

Being somewhat of a type A personality of course I wasn’t contented to watch from the sidelines. I’d like to think a took an active role and made some pretty savvy life choices to get to where I am. I’ve made some mistakes along the way…

After a hectic four-day trip to Vegas, my aunt took my sister and I to a 15 kilometre hike around Silver Falls State Park in Oregon.

I’ve always considered myself a city girl, and I will probably never live more than commutable distance away from a major city, like London. If I have it my way I will be renting my flat in Soho (for the same price!) until I die.

But for some reason I’ve developed a strange fascination for hiking around nature this year. I’ve discovered how much I love to just walk with no particular destination in mind, to soak in the views around me and allow it to soothe my often anxious and high-strung city soul.

You learn a lot when you’re somewhere with no mobile phone coverage or Wifi, especially when you’re running low on battery and can’t even listen to music on your Spotify…