Poosey Digest: Blueberry soup

Greetings from Poosey.

Blueberry soup. Didn’t even sound right, but I ordered it. The only thing that can overcome my hunger is my curiosity. In Sweden they call it blabarssoppa, a word that drives my spellcheck crazy, but in the St. Louis restaurant they simply called it “blueberry soup.” So, I ordered it and dug in. Blueberries, maple syrup, cardamom, cinnamon, and lemon juice. It tasted like …well …blueberry soup. I just assume that in Sweden they have way too many blueberries.

Some foods just seem wrong at the inception. The Jack-in-the-Box chain features a bacon milkshake. Some restaurants in the South offer buffalo-wing shakes. One of the most popular milkshakes in Japan is the Pancake Shake, and a San Francisco Bar offers the “McNuggetini” (mixing a McDonald’s chocolate shake with vanilla vodka poured into a barbecue sauce-rimmed glass and topped off with a McNugget). There’s also the sweet potato shake from Georgia, and the pie shake from Tennessee (you choose your slice of pie and they put it into the shake). Folks in Asia and South America favor the avocado milkshake. Not to be outdone, several bars in Dublin offer up the “Guinness Shake” (in case you want to get drunk then sleep it off immediately). Perhaps with some foods it’s best not to label and describe them because they just seem wrong at the outset.

The West Egg Café in Atlanta offers the “PB&J Burger” — meat, peanut butter, pimento cheese, bacon and tomato jam. Sounds like something first graders would throw together to please their teacher. Just doesn’t sound right. Speaking of nuts, Matt’s Place in Butte, MT, will serve you the “Nutburger,” a regular hamburger topped with nuts and slathered in mayo. And in case you’re shopping for products to stock your cellar in case North Korea pops a bomb our direction, you can now buy “cheeseburger in a can.” Whoopee. Maybe we could load a few cans into a rocket and send it back. “The Luther Burger” is a staple at Mulligan’s in Decatur, GA. It should be called a breakfast burger in that it features a glazed donut with a hamburger in the middle. As an option you can order your meat on a cinnamon roll. McGuire’s Irish Pub in Pensacola, FL, features the “Hot Fudge Burger” — three quarter pounds of beef covered in a scoop of hot fudge-drizzled, vanilla ice cream. What an awful thing to do to a poor steer. Then there’s the Fried Banana and Peanut Butter Burger in Boston; the Mango, Pear, and Pine Nuts Burger in Atlanta; and the Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce Burger at many Wahlburger’s outlets. If you recently won the lottery, you might want to fly to New York and get a reservation at Serendipity 3 and order up “Le Burger Extravagant.” The burger will be imported Wagyu beef and topped with 18-month cave-aged cheddar, shaved black truffles, one fried quail egg, and caviar. This $295 burger will come with a solid gold, diamond-encrusted toothpick to hold things together. If you’re hungry for dessert, you might try the $1000 Tahitian bean and edible gold leaf sundae. I’m sure that each of these burgers is just delightful to some people but, gosh, it makes me hungry for a plain tenderloin with pickles.

Maybe it’s living with husband Herb that’s made me overly cautious about foods that just don’t seem right. I remember the first time he saw re-fried beans on a menu. “I’ll be havin’ none of that!” he said. I asked him why. “If they couldn’t fry ‘em right the first time—I ain’t eatin’ no leftovers!” Dear Herb. To him, Dijon mustard is exotic. Consuming anything he can’t pronounce simply shuts down his throat. The man won’t touch sushi because the very thought of it sounds so weird, but he considers bull testicles a delicacy straight from the Garden of Eden. He won’t allow tomatoes on his hamburger because it doesn’t seem correct, yet he squirts ketchup onto his biscuits and gravy. I used to argue, but when he pulls the, “My mom did it that way,” card on me, then I know it’s best to shut up and look the other direction when he eats.

But in a world where up is down and down is up, “truths” out of Washington can be changed at the tweak of a tweet, anyone’s opinion depends entirely upon their political affiliation, and getting reelected becomes a priority over doing the right thing, I’m not surprised at anything …including blueberry soup.

You ever ’round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.