Strange. I grew up spending every Christmas in the Bronx. And I worked at Yankee Stadium for three years. And I met Friend Wife at a party in the Bronx.

And yet I know very little about it. Go figure.

I can see your problem, though. Working that many hours does put a damper on extra activities. But it won't last forever. When I started freelancing I worked about 18 hours/day. Every day. But after a couple of years of that you realize that you have to cut back or you won't survive.

Work is supposed to be what you do to make everything else happen.

Funny story, Brook! Squirrels are funny creatures to watch anyway- much less throw in a couple of fruity umbrella-drinks!

I haven't seen mulberries since I was a kid, but as I remember the little new berries are tiny and white and HARD. They slowly turn pale green, then red, then they get large and ripen into big ole juicy succulent fruits- some of which grow to the size of a ping-pong ball if they don't drop to the ground, get swiped by birds or l'il barefooted boys first!

Your blueberry cake sounds YUMMY, sabi... by the way, welcome to this site! I'm rather new myself and I'm lovin' it here! The folks are wonderfully knowledegable- they love to share and allow others to share too as well- and you'll never find a finer bunch of NUTS!

Wonderful contributions, sabi!

One hint for those who don't have beautiful fresh blueberries easily available to them... if using frozen or canned blueberries that typically are extra-wet, to avoid gray pancake batter, sometimes it can be best not to add the berries to the actual batter, but to ladle plain batter onto a griddle or into a skillet first, then as the raw batter on top of the cooking pancake starts to bubble indicating time to fliip it, scatter a few berries across ths wet raw side just prior to flipping. Once flipped, the still raw batter ooozes and flows around, surrounds the blueberries and one still gets the impression that the blueberries are locked inside the pancake, but the super wet frozen or canned berries haven't juiced-up the pancake batter and turned it a weird gray.

One learns a valueable lesson like this the hard way when they've prepared a five-gallon pickle-bucket of pancake batter full of leaking, juicy frozen berries for breakfast service in a restaurant! I ain't never seen such ugly pancakes in my life- delicious, mind you- but ugLY, let me tell you! Ha! I only made that mistake once!

Of all the berries I've seen available for sale- mulberries haven't been among them. I always just assumed they were an obscure seasonal thing that were too rare or difficult to harvest for mass sale. If anyone ever locates any available commercially, please share your source! Similarly in Alaska, we have a variety of raspberry called a "salmon-berry" which as you might guess, doesn't get as deep-red as a raspberry... more of a "salmon" pinkish-orange. Not sold commercially at all, yet they are absolutely delicious, and can get the size of a golf ball!