Debra-Lynn B. Hook: Summer foods conjure memories of growing up in the South

I bite into a plump, juicy blackberry in my Ohio kitchen and suddenly it is a blistering summer afternoon in the South and I am 8.

I am with my three sisters and our pails, in the middle of the brambly bushes in the woods behind my house in Greenville, South Carolina. We are picking berries, fat as bumblebees, plop, plop — 10 in our metal buckets and two in our mouths. We are smart enough to make sure more berries make it to the buckets than our mouths lest it take forever to collect enough for the cobbler Mama will make straight away. We will applaud and shriek and crown our reward with vanilla ice cream that will melt as soon as it touches the hot syrupy berries and warm mounds of Martha White dough.

I sink my teeth into a perfect tomato this time of year and I am likewise transported.