Let’s see, there’s got to be flour and butter and sugar. I know that. And blackberries, of course. Maybe some cinnamon and baking powder (because I always use those in my baking recipes). I heard lemon juice is useful. And then more sugar and butter. Lots of butter and sugar. And more blackberries.

What else?

Well, judging from this photo you need blackberry pickers. That’s Chloe’s friend Alex, there on the left. You may recall that he visited us in Nantes in May. In fact, he attends Quest University, the college to which we will be taking Chloe on Friday and for which Chloe and Melinda made a huge Costco trip today to pick up sundries and things. But sundries are not part of a blackberry pie recipe. And what I was trying to get at when I started this paragraph was the missing ingredient.

Friends. To fully have a good blackberry pie you need to share it with friends.

Last night we had dinner with Alex and his parents, they having invited us over. Deb, Alex’s mom, made an incredibly delicious blackberry pie using blackberries they had picked with Chloe yesterday morning.