Bring Me Berries

Appears in
Kitchen of Light: New Scandinavian Cooking

By Andreas Viestad

Published 2003

  • About
My interest in food goes back as far as I do: Being hungry is my earliest memory, and the urge to eliminate hunger governed my life. As a small child, I was both greedy and lazy—at least that is what my parents tell me. And as a baby, I didn’t really see the point of walking when I could just continue being carried, as I always had.

Then, one fine summer day in 1974, when I was a little more than a year old, my father placed me in front of a row of raspberry bushes and left me there. Sitting down, I could reach maybe one or two of the beautiful red berries. They were sweet and perfectly ripe. I uttered a demanding sound, as if to say, “More berries!” But there was no one there to obey my commands. If I was going to get more of the juicy berries, I had to stand up. I rose to the occasion, so to speak, and picked a few. And once I was standing, I could see more raspberries, big, crimson red, juicy, velvety raspberries, each one sweeter than the next—just a few feet farther away. I had to choose between my laziness and my hunger. The temptation was too much—hunger won.