Les Framboises

Why do raspberries so make me think of France? Simply and independently because I adore both? No, there is something more to it than that.

I've long adored raspberries. Biting into that faintly fuzzy skin, the fuzz gently tickling your lips, giving way to a soft and momentary gel-like sensation against your front teeth and then to your tongue, where its perfectly slight tartness overcomes your senses and taste and texture hover harmoniously.

My love of raspberries is inextricably linked to France somehow. I've always enjoyed raspberries but have only just visited France for the first time in 2006, where I spent but a week in Paris (not that it takes any longer to be fully enamored) and my only recollection of tasting raspberries was of a raspberry tartlette purchased from the bakery, Paul. I selected the raspberry tartlette because it called out to me (along with the café flavored macaron), a perfectly glazed little beauty with every conceivable inch of the top of the tartlette covered with glazed raspberries. I took it back to my hotel room at the end of what was the most beautifully sunny day during my week in Paris.

As I sat on the bed of my small hotel room, the veranda's French doors wide open before me, I bit into the tartlette and melted. It was so ridiculously delicious... perfectly and simultaneously sweet and tart. The texture was softly dense, the glazed raspberries delightfully slimy, and the crust buttery and delicately crumbly. I feebly attempted to capture the essence of that very tartlette I purchased from Paul in Paris. I suppose I was salivating so profusely, I gave up further attempts to capture its true essence. Thus, this photo falls quite short of the tartlette's true beauty but does remind me of that delightful moment of anticipation before first biting into it:
A couple of days ago, I saw a photograph of a raspberry dessert. It was not a tartlette and for the life of me, I cannot recall exactly what it was. But those raspberries in the photograph immediately stirred something within me. You know how you can bite into something and be taken back to a fond childhood memory (like that precious scene in Ratatouille where the bitterly harsh food critic bites into the ratatouille before him and is instantly taken back to that moment of childhood, in which his mother was preparing the simple stew for him) and all the sensations of that moment flash within you briefly but powerfully? Yes, seeing this image of the raspberries was something like that. But rather than being a past memory, it felt like a flash of sensations and memories I have yet to live. Do you know this feeling?

The same day I came across that photograph I read Function of Time's post, which included mention of the raspberry tartlette she purchased from Paul! This further stirred that sensation within me and hasn't left me since. How can this sweet little berry produce such a profound longing for France within me? Was it really just that one tartlette? I don't think so. The sensation seems yet to be fully realized. Isn't that exciting? To think that we can experience such profound sensations for memories yet to come?

*First photo from here. Second photo is mine.