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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in fruit

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Plum Butter

There's a bag of plums waiting by the front door when I get home. Earth be praised, it's that generous time of year, and my friend's backyard tree is bearing well.

Some love clear, light jellies, but me, I'm a fruit butter kind of guy: heavy, dark, earthy. I wash the plums, pit and halve them, and throw them into the electric cauldron (= slow-cooker) with a generous pinch of salt and just enough apple juice to cover the bottom.

When the fruits collapse, I run them through a food mill to catch the skins, and return the puree, now an outrageous magenta color, to the cauldron.

Reduced by half, it would be the most delicious plum sauce that you've ever had, but I'm aiming for something even more intense. Many hours, and much stirring, later, I've finally arrived at the Land of Promise: plum butter.

The color is porphyry, the flavor almost overwhelmingly intense.

The jars go onto the shelf along with the others: concentrated Summer, Sunlight in glass, stored for the long dark months ahead. I admire their assembled variety of rich, jewel tones.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Cherry Tree Carol

It's May, but I'm tasting July.

The cherry tree on the corner is blooming. Soon the hard little fruits will begin to set, no bigger than the pit of a cherry. Through May and June, they'll swell with succulence. In the White Nights of Midsummer, a cherry-ripe blush will spread across their maiden flesh, and by July we'll be picking, the first stone fruits of the year.

These, of course, are tart (“pie”) cherries. Minnesota's too cold to raise table cherries, but that doesn't stop us. Here in the North, we know that you need some piquancy to give sweetness character. Without an acid edge, mere sweetness is insipid.

The tree is not mine, but I do have gathering rights. Some years back I noticed that the fruit seemed to be going unharvested, which seemed a shame. My knock at the door went unanswered. “If someone objects, they'll let me know,” I thought, and began to fill my baskets.

Three years ago, a new couple bought Cherry Tree House. I went over and introduced myself.

“Hi, I'm the guy that's been stealing your cherries for years,” I said.

The woman laughed. “You're the third person that's said that,” she said. “Go ahead, pick all you want.”

So I do. Usually I drop off a pint or two of cherry vodka by way of thanks, but that's by the by.

Spring means time to eat up the last of last year's harvest, to make way for what's to come. This morning, I opened the last of the pippy black raspberry jam from the canes out back.

Soon I'll take the last of the cherries out of the freezer. For May Full Moon, I'll bake us up a nice, tart cherry crisp: the last of the old, making way for the first of the new.

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    This year I bought a pawpaw tree and a persimmon tree from Edible Landscaping. I've planted them and they are both still alive.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Winter Peach

Don't get me wrong: I love apples.

But when's the last time that you bit into an apple and had juice run down your forearm and drip from your elbow?

A good pear is truly a full-body experience.

Pears. I just ate my first one of the season. OMGs.

The Witch Goddess's sacred flower is, of course, the Rose, but the Rose family is a large one. Apples are roses. So are pears. Cut one with the stem. Like an apple, it will show forth the Flower of Life. And cut across the stem, behold: the Fivefold Star of Rebirth.

We've been eating pears for a long time: since, apparently, the Neolithic, if not before. They ate them in the Lake Villages of Stone Age Switzerland. They're mentioned in Linear B inscriptions from Mycenaean Greece. The name pear comes ultimately from Latin, which got it from Greek, which got it from the Phoenicians (p'ri = “fruit”).

And every pear's a little goddess. Hold one in your hand. It's like one of those big-hipped Mamas that the ancestors made to make the garden grow. It irks me when people say that a situation has gone “pear-shaped” to mean that it's gone wrong. Is the implication really that perfection = round? Round things roll away and break. Low centers of gravity mean stability.

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  • Tyger
    Tyger says #
    I'm currently visiting family in Switzerland. More and better pear varieties than in the Southern US where I live. I am in pear h
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    I've long been struck by the absence--that annoying partridge aside--of pears in mythology/the Received Tradition. As my friend V
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I clipped a recipe from the newspaper for apple kielbasa bake. The last three times I've made it I used pears instead of apples.
  • Kile Martz
    Kile Martz says #
    Unlike the proliferation of commercial apple varieties here in the US, you will find few varieties of pears at your local grocer.

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
A harvest of hats

I’m late with this post. I normally aim to blog in the first two days of the month, and in truth this time I nearly forgot. The 1st brought me a handfasting, the 2nd a political launch and as I swapped hastily between celebrant and press officer hats, the Druid blogger hat didn’t get a look in. I wear a lot of hats, so this kind of thing happens now and then.

When you have one identity defined by one thing you are doing, it’s much easier to steer the course of your life and pace yourself in line with the year. The more hats you have, the harder it is to keep an overview. I frequently end up running from one kind of job to another, so busy trying to be in the right headspace for the task in hand that I don’t pay as much attention as I might to the bigger picture. So here I am wondering how it got to be September already, and nearly missing a post.

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  • Lynda Ryder
    Lynda Ryder says #
    You've got me thinking now about how many hats I find myself wearing during a typical day/week/month... And you're so right about
Warm Weather Kitchen Witchery--The Magical Properties of Fresh Fruit

It's beginning to look a lot like summer (at least where I live). And when it's warm out, fresh fruit just feels right. In addition to cleansing, hydrating, and nourishing the body, it can also help align the spirit with sweetness, beauty, and the luxurious abundance of the earth. Plus, each fruit possesses its own unique magical properties. So I thought it'd be fun to explore the magical properties of various types of fruits, and to discuss some hints and tips about how we can effectively incorporate them into our edible enchantments.

So, without further ado, here are some of the fruits that seem to feel best this time of year, along with a sampling of their magical properties.

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