Introducing "April's Got the Blues"

A note from the cook: I’ll confess to a temptation to celebrate the season with some tacky gesture, like showering Jelly Bellies into this month’s granola, or laying a big old Cadbury egg at the top of each bag. Instead, I proposed a recipe featuring apricots and blueberries named “April’s got the Blues” which Geoff said sounded like a Dylan song. There is probably no better way to seal a granola’s fate than Dylan. (Have you ever noticed how most granola lovers also love Dylan?)

I set out to write a ballad in honor of this auspicious association, forgetting how bad I am at lyrics. For now, I’ll have to settle for telling you what that song would have been like if I’d had the skill to write it properly.

It would have a curiously old-fashioned bluesy riff to it along with a surprisingly sweet melody, although sparse on the arrangement—in fact reined in so much on the harmonies that you almost

feel

parts of it that aren’t actually there. What better way to fill you with the kind of sad, desperate longing that makes even the most dreadful parts of being in love so beautiful.

This girl, April, is a mystery. She loves Jesus and Obama and all that—very all-American. Or so you think until she smiles and it nearly breaks your heart. The kind of smile that makes you want to put your head in a pothole or thrash it against the pavement. Think Alicia Keyes (doesn’t Bob have some thing for her?) without the long lashes (not natural) but with the wind in her hair, and, metaphorically speaking a

lot

of antioxidants. April is a walker. She’s fearless about it. She walks in the spring rain and the fog. She walks in the morning and at night, and, at least in your mind (because you’re singing along now, which means

you

are the one who’s losing her), up any old street in Providence. In fact, the city street names take up more of the song than seems right, yet the names create that gritty old-time reality that keeps the song so grounded: Hope, Thayer, Wickendon, Friendship, Pine, Potters, Elmwood (right by, it so happens, our granola’s birth place plus the two places now selling bags of Providence Granola Project granola) and on she goes (towards Cranston, I guess) without a second thought, without looking back. Until—like this month’s granola—she passes right out of your life and you wonder if you’ll ever meet her again. Deep in your heart, you know you will. It’s not in the lyrics. There are no promises. Somehow you just know.

And the granola: the apricots are unsulphured, which means they don’t have that drop-dead orange beauty that you know in your heart can’t be real anyway. The blueberries are wild, hand-picked, juice-sweetened—too pricey for our budget, yes, but hey, this time it’s for love. Order up soon, because we’re only making a bit more than we know we need. We’ll be in the kitchen next weekend, so for those of you month-clubbers, yours will arrive mid-month.