Roast a cup of almonds. Low heat. The nutty taste bursts on your tongue. Grind in the food processor. Big brash noise! Add organic rolled oats and flour, a cup each. Pinch of salt. Half cup coconut oil. Smells like the beach, sun and wind in the coconut palm; a barefoot Mexican boy climbs the trunk and cuts coconuts. Thud, on dry sand. Fractures. Drink the milk from the crack. Cool and fresh.
Add a half-cup maple syrup. Tastes like spring in Quebec, frosty nights, sunny days, sap runs like water from tapped trees, buckets full. Gather on foot and tip into a vast flat pan over a red-hot fire in the sugar shack. Boiling. Steam billows all day. Breathe fragrant maple. Snow crunches in the morning and melts in the sun.
Sap hauled and dumped in the pan. First boil, clear amber. Second and third, darker. Taste blooms.
Pour a half-cup syrup into the food processor. The dough lumps. Stop the noise. Shape balls, size of an egg; indent with your thumb to make a nest. Fill with blackberry jam. Berries plucked from prickly vines in August, purple black, full of juice, sweet on the tongue, soft and slightly firm between fingers. Bucket on a string around your neck, crammed. The big bowl on the ground filled up. Carried home, pressed through a food mill to detach seeds. Purple juice boiled, thickened; bottled and processed. Jam for winter, for the birds’ nest cookies.
Bake ‘til golden and crisp. Cool. Share with friends and family.
See the whole universe in one cookie.
Head on Fire 