Our daughter Molly regularly makes magic from the mundane.
Armed with her grandpa’s vintage wicker tackle box, she forages much of her food from around her neighborhood. What makes this habit of hers even more impressive is that she lives in the heart of one of the midwest’s largest cities.
She finds extraordinary treasures in places few others would think to look and recently enjoyed a delicious meal of chicken shawarma she made from a large shelf mushroom she’d foraged from an oak tree. She makes amazing pastries using nut flour and berries from her various forages.
All of her creations turn out to be as beautiful as they are delicious.
For her brother and new sister in-law’s birthdays, Molly baked up some homemade pop tarts with designs inspired by Charlie’s Hawaiian shirt and sweatsuit collections and filled with foraged mullberries and juneberries. She made Tara a puzzle cookie inspired by Tara’s first wedding dress.
She has been turning out plum delicacies with a gleeful abandon since she discovered a wild plum tree a few blocks from her apartment.
From the time she was old enough to recognize it, Molly has hated waste. She shops at vintage clothing stores and wears her favorite items until even the patches she repairs them with give out.
A single whole chicken becomes tasty meals for a week, and then bone broth frozen in batches. She would like for the whole world to be as careful with its resources as she is with hers, but she is unfailingly kind to people (like her mother) who can’t bring themselves to adopt such extreme levels of frugality.
She makes me think, though, and evaluate my choices carefully.
Today is Molly’s golden birthday and it seems fitting that such a special occasion is happening for her in the middle of an ordinary week. She will make it extraordinary, I’m sure.
Happy birthday to the baby of the original Biskupic Four, and the child who raised us all.
Your precious mettle is a treasure to us all.
