Blackberry-Ginger Fizz

There are times in every person’s life when you have to make the hard decisions. When you find yourself at a crossroad. Do you turn left or right? Recently I was faced with one of those decisions. My own personal King Solomon’s choice, except if the baby was a blackberry.

Here’s how it began. It was an ordinary Sunday morning. Matt and I headed to the Beacon Farmer’s Market, where we often buy our produce supplies for the week. We usually get there on the early side, but this particular Sunday we dragged our feet a little. So we were tired and slow and showed up at the market late, after the majority of the stalls had been picked clean. Corn? Sold out by noon. Eggplants?  All gone. Sungold tomatoes? Don’t make me laugh, should have been here at dawn.

That’s when I saw the last pint of perfectly ripe blackberries. They were tucked under a pile of radishes, which must have been why they hadn’t been snatched up hours earlier.

And just as I was making my way towards them, someone else swooped in and grabbed them. “Ah, crumbs!” I howled, startling several small children eating ice cream nearby. (*Editor’s note: she did not say the word “crumbs”. It was much ruder.)

“I think there might be a few plums left somewhere”, I said to Matt, despondently. Even Arya dropped the pickle she had found on the ground, so she could give me a pitying look.

So I got on line holding my sad little plums, directly behind the woman who had scored the blackberries. She was on her cell phone, gabbing away about something (in my vexation, I remember it being something like, “Eew, a rescue dog? Gross! Put them all to sleep!”, though to be fair that may not actually have been what she was saying).

Anyway, the line was backed up (someone was trying to pay for their chard with pennies). Blackberry woman, impatient now, started tapping her foot, looking around at the other stalls. “Hey hon!” she yelled to a man at the other end of the market who was on his own phone. “Are there any blackberries over there?“. 

“Um, yeah. I think so”, he yelled back, not really looking.

She put the blackberries down and wandered off to the shorter line. I scooped them up, of course, being no fool, and was pulling out my wallet when I heard her say, “Babe, those are plums! Hold on, I’ll run back and get those blackberries from the other stall.”

The farmer looked at me. “Are you going to give her back the blackberries?”, his eyes said.

I came to my moral crossroad.

“Here. You found them first”, I said, handing them over.

She didn’t even thank me.

But wouldn’t you know it? I found blackberries on sale (2 for 1!) at Adams Fairacre grocery later that day. Huzzah! Although when I got them home I realized that I didn’t want to make a pie, or a crumble, or a tart. I wanted a goddamn drink!

I had been thinking about this idea for awhile. Muddled berries, mint, lime, vodka. Then I remembered seeing a recipe in Bon Appétit that included ginger beer. Holy cow, is it a good combination. I changed the recipe slightly, adding a splash of St. Germaine (elderflower liqueur) to give the tart blackberries a little floral sweetness. I gotta tell you, this is a drink that’s worth a bit of drama.

tips

You could use ginger ale instead of ginger beer, but it will be sweeter and not as spicy.

If you don’t have a muddler, use the back of a wooden spoon.

If you’re throwing a party, make a big batch and serve it in a punch bowl. Add ice to each glass separately so it doesn’t get watered down.