By Late May. Memorial Day weekend. I took Miya to the coast — our first trip since the pandemic, since the divorce, since everything. Cannon Beach, because it is the closest beautiful place and because Miya has never seen the ocean, which is a failure of parenthood I am correcting today. We drove through the Coast Range with the windows down and Miya fell asleep in the car seat and woke up when she smelled the salt air — literally woke up, nose first, the way a dog wakes up when it smells food, except this was a child smelling the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
She stood on the beach and stared at the waves and said, "It's so big." And then: "Is that Japan?" pointing at the horizon. I said, "Yes. Very far away, but yes. Japan is on the other side." She considered this. "Can we go there?" she asked. "Someday," I said. "When you're older." The promise went into the category of promises I intend to keep: take Miya to Japan. Walk through the markets in Tokyo. Eat at the counter of a ramen shop. Stand where Fumiko came from. Bring the recipe cards. Come home and cook.
I made onigiri on the beach — brought rice and nori and umeboshi and shaped them sitting on a towel while the waves crashed and Miya dug in the sand. Beach onigiri, with sand on the nori and salt air in the rice, tasted like the best onigiri I have ever made, which is probably not true but felt true, because context is the most important ingredient and the context was: the ocean, the child, the freedom, the rice shaped by my hands in a wind that comes from the direction of Japan.
On the drive home, Miya asleep again, I thought about the book. The book needs a chapter about Japan — about the trip I want to take, about Fumiko's family in Nagano, about the distance between here and there and the food that crosses it. The chapter will be written before the trip, a map drawn before the territory is explored. The map might be wrong. The territory might surprise me. But the map is necessary. The map is the wish. The wish is the chapter. The chapter is the book.
The onigiri were the heart of that day, but I had packed these pops in the cooler too — red, white, and layered, because it was Memorial Day and I wanted the whole trip to feel like a real occasion, the kind Miya would remember. She ate one standing at the edge of the water, the stick in one hand and the other hand stretched toward the horizon, and I thought: yes, this is exactly right. If you’re going to pack food for the day a child first sees the ocean, you might as well make it festive.
Patriotic Pops
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes (including freeze time) | Servings: 8 pops
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
- 1 tablespoon honey or sugar, divided
- 1 cup full-fat coconut milk or vanilla yogurt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
- 1/4 cup water, divided
- 8 popsicle molds and sticks
Instructions
- Blend the red layer. Combine strawberries, 1/2 tablespoon honey, and 2 tablespoons water in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into a small bowl and set aside.
- Prepare the white layer. Stir together the coconut milk (or yogurt) and vanilla extract in a small bowl until combined. Sweeten to taste with a little honey if desired.
- Blend the blue layer. Combine blueberries, remaining 1/2 tablespoon honey, and remaining 2 tablespoons water in the blender. Blend until smooth. Set aside.
- Layer the pops. Spoon the strawberry mixture into the bottom third of each popsicle mold. Freeze for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until just firm enough to hold the next layer.
- Add the white layer. Spoon the coconut milk or yogurt mixture over the set strawberry layer, filling to about two-thirds full. Insert popsicle sticks. Freeze for another 45 minutes to 1 hour.
- Finish with blueberry. Spoon the blueberry mixture over the top to fill the molds. Freeze at least 2 hours, or overnight, until completely solid.
- Unmold and serve. Run warm water briefly over the outside of the molds to loosen. Gently pull pops free. Serve immediately or wrap individually and store in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 75 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 11g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 15mg