Why I’m drinking vodka at 0700 local time, Portland, Oregon

I admit I have been brutally homesick since moving to Portland in January. Looking though pictures the other day of the mountains in the desert southwest, Tsegi Canyon out in Navajo country, I burst into tears. The red rocks and blue sky and the few dusty sage bushes struggling to keep their hold on the rocks! My heart turned over in my chest and I had to lie down. My heart has started skipping beats since I left the four sacred mountains.

Portland is beautiful, wet and green, roses blooming everywhere you look, huge pines nearly touching the sky that the locals call Dougies. I look around at the lush beauty and think, where did the fucking sky go? Do I even remember the color blue?

But I am determined to make the best of all the blessings of this beautiful new country. And Portland is foodie central. Thinking of the winter to come, I’ve started experimenting with cordials. Cordials, also known as booze infused.

Recipe one is local fruit with vodka and tequila. I moved aside my soap making gear and set up two workstations to compare and contrast. One pint of blackberries, one pint of blueberries, 2 of strawberries each, and a fifth of vodka and same of tequila in their respective jars. Tasted. Added quarter cup of sugar. I’ve let that sit for a couple of weeks. Pulled them down this morning and tasted. Not bad!

The vodka beats the tequila for summer berries. But it still needs something. Lemon? How about an herb? The garden box is growing wild, lavender and rosemary and thyme and mint, chocolate and grapefruit. So I set up another experiment station and portioned the vodka berry cordial into cups of herbs.

Oddly enough, the one that smells the best is the English thyme. The mints are sweet smelling but too strong for the berries. Rosemary- not. The lavender is not bad. But the thyme takes the cake, hands down.

Now, I’m not drinking the samples as much as tasting them from a spoon, so somehow I lose track of how much I have actually sampled. I only wonder what’s going on when I go back to the garden to pick some more herbs and I seem to be listing. I was going to walk up to the kitchen store and buy a funnel but I better wait a few hours. Who cares? It’s summer in Portland and the berries are getting ripe.