“I wouldn’t do that if I were you”

The first time my sister said this to me was during my first visit to Vancouver Island. It was November and Becky had been attending school at Royal Roads University. We were enjoying a walk on the beautiful campus, which is not only on the ocean and has its own castle, but where you can find several peacocks roaming the grounds. I remember being disappointed that I had missed blackberry season. I had heard they grow like weeds there. Eventually we came across a bush that had several rotten and shrivelled berries on it and one single plump one that looked perfectly ripe. As I climbed down the ditch to pick it I heard “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”. Who is she, the sister six years my junior, to tell me if I should or shouldn’t do something. Well, I should have listened. That beautiful berry tasted of mold and I was quick to spit it out.

It was during our next trip to Tuscany that it happened again. We had walked through an olive orchard to the villa that was hosting our cooking class for the day. I love olive oil and am quite proud of my collection of oils from different countries that I have visited. It was as I reached up to pick one right off the tree that I heard it again. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”.Well, I did it. I put that olive in my mouth and as I bit down I experienced the most awful bitter taste that you can imagine. How could pressing this horrible fruit produce such lovely oils? It took a lot of red wine to wash the taste of the olive out of my mouth so that my taste buds were not ruined for the whole day.

Next was Greece. My 40th birthday trip. I couldn’t resist  picking a nut from a wild almond tree and smashing it open with a rock. Maybe instead repeating the same “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” phrase, little sister could have explained that some almonds are bitter almonds that naturally contain small traces of cyanide. I may or may not have listened either way and unfortunately my tongue and lips were numb for hours afterwards.

This pattern has repeated its self at least twice more. Once in Ecuador when I bought a coconut with a straw from a street vendor, knowing how much I dislike canned coconut water, and again in France when I had to taste a champagne grape off the vine months before it was ripe. And little sisters’ words have not always been the same. They have evolved to “remember all the other times you didn’t listen to me” to “do what you want, you aren’t going to listen to me anyway”. The point is not that I must be defiant to my sisters’ warnings but that I must taste and experience these foods myself. The good, the bitter and the potentially lethal. We remember them as funny stories that we share together as part of my food memories.