Summertime in northern Minnesota brought out a great harvest of blueberries, and they are part of what defines me as a person. Possibly that sounds like hyperbole but their taste is woven into the fabric of my psyche. To this day, I cannot eat even one without at least a glimmer of a flashback some fifty to sixty years ago to my self-aware childhood visiting Ely for two weeks each summer.

Did we ever love these tasty, antioxidant-filled enjoyments of God’s creativity! Back in that day, we knew nothing about the health advantages of these tiny berries, but we fully understood the culinary benefits to our palate. These were not like the humongous, commercially grown BLUEBERRIES in food markets, boldly and brazenly displayed in neatly stacked square, plastic containers. Obviously, they are competing with the larger strawberries, the more expensive raspberries, and the relative newbies and attention-getters, blackberries, which populate the fruit stands at the front of the grocery stores during summertime. Berries are shipped in at all times of the year from the other hemisphere, grown with chemically fertilized, temperature-controlled, and soil-perfected environments.

Anyone who has ever eaten authentic blueberries grown in the wild knows that the large commercial-grade substitutes, while looking good on the outside, do not come close to the flavor of hand-picked blueberries of northern Minnesota. In their natural state they are small and packed with flavor. In fact, one naturally grown blueberry has more than ten times the flavor (as measured on the Malarkian-Gianotti flavor scale) than the commercial-grade berries, according to my personal and unbiased research spanning some fifty or sixty years of scientific inquiry.

Early in our two weeks, everyone—Gramps, Grams, Mom, Dad, Mary Beth, Mike, me, and Jim (when he got old enough)—would take our many wicker baskets and head out to the favorite spot along a road where the berries were particularly good that year. What a memory.

Unfortunately, the horseflies loved blueberries also, so like the men of Nehemiah’s times, we came ready to fight a battle with one hand while doing the work of the Lord with the other hand. By this latter, I mean picking the Lord’s bounty He put right there for us to pick and enjoy. About half of what we gathered never made it to the farmhouse; I need not explain why. The whole experience was quite tasty. We had blueberries on everything for two weeks—pancakes, ice cream, and pies. You would think we would get sick of those things, but we never did.

The other gastronomic memory of my time at the farm is that of potica (pronounced poe-teet-za). While many areas claim cultural ownership of its origin, it comes from Slovenia and, therefore, is part of my cultural background. It hails back to the late Middle Ages, even before the 1500s, when it was called potivca. Maybe Martin Luther, the great reformer of the early sixteenth century, shared our enjoyment of this delightful pastry after posting his ninety-five theses on the door at Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Or maybe Ferdinand Magellan brought some potica along as he left his port in Spain on September 20, 1519, to lead an armada of five ships to circumnavigate the world in search of a quicker access to the coveted clove spice of the Indies and domination of world trade. It may not have helped with the scurvy that plagued the journey, but it would have packed well for periodic enjoyment during the duller parts of the journey to supplement their rice and wine. You never know. There is no reason to believe they didn’t bring potica with them, so the jury is still out, awaiting further historical research.

Potica is a traditional pastry, a nut roll, immensely flavorful, especially when served warm with a healthy application of butter. Whether from the hand of Grandma Mantel (my mother’s mother, who was a first-generation Slovenian immigrant), or Grandma Gianotti (of Finnish background), we always had freshly made potica. The pastry is so delicious that many have culturally appropriated it as their own. It was made in a very unusual way. The dough was spread out over an entire kitchen table—the bigger the table the better—to almost paper-thin. As with all good recipes, the filling allowed for secretive added ingredients but usually included crushed walnuts, sugar (of course), egg yolks, butter (of course), honey, and cinnamon. Some people add raisins or sub out the walnuts for hazelnuts or the like. The mixture was spread evenly over the entire paper-thin dough covering the table.

Then the entire conglomerate was hand-rolled into one giant snake-looking roll, with the fillings carefully adjusted so the snake didn’t look like it had just eaten a rabbit. Grams (and few others) had the skill and patience to create a perfectly consistent and very long roll of potica. But, wait, there’s more. This snake of flour and filling was placed zig-zag into a baking pan. Of course, the larger the table, the more pans they could fill up, resulting in more potica.

The pans were then put into the oven for proper cooking time, and the finished potica was served in slices that looked like crosscut slices of a tree showing its age rings. It doesn’t get any better than eating potica around Grandma’s kitchen table.

This reminds me of the twenty-third Psalm, which includes this verse: “You [Lord] prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows” (Ps. 23:5). Might I be permitted to imagine dining with the Lord enjoying pastries like potica anointed with butter (not my head, but the potica), with a cup of milk overflowing into my mouth? Or blueberries atop a large bowl of ice cream? If there is no potica in His kingdom, God will provide something better. When I was in my youth (the 1950s and ‘60s), the rest of the world was filled with the Korean War, McCarthyism, theological degradation in mainline denominations, race riots, and more. But eating potica in northern Minnesota with my people, I was oblivious to all else; I was at peace. So too, if we know the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23, His protection for us against the anxiety-causing events of the world gives us assurance and confidence. In faith, I can eat at the table He sets for me. All is at rest with my soul.