Think On It

Food for thought

September 11th, 2008

That is the beginning of plum syrup I made experimentally and tried yesterday on pancakes. Yes, pancakes. I don’t like pancakes, but I know a lot of people do, so I figured I’d better try it out the way others would. I liked the syrup very much, the pancakes, not so much. I love crepes, but all the things people say about pancakes: light! fluffy! ethereal! cloudlike! are the things I don’t like about them. I like chewy, dense, tender and eggy. What you see above is wild plums. There are three kinds here: sloes, red ones and these blueish ones. These have a acerbic quality I love and rarely find that reminds me of chokecherries, another thing I can’t explain. I have never seen them again since I left Maine. What the heck are they and where else do they grow? The point is, though, that very likely wherever you live there is a wild fruit like this. It’s something most would not eat alone and raw. Like a cranberry or a lingonberry. It is sour and makes the inside of your mouth pucker all over. That, my friend, makes incredibly good syrup that you can use in lots of ways. These fruits are also generally jammed with vitamins, which is probably why we have to fight the birds for them.

The next thought is that tomorrow, September 5, 2008, is the first day in which you can email your entry to Alec to win the soup contest. I wish I could enter! While listening to friends discuss what might make a good entry, I thought of about 30 soups I would enter if I could. Hah! Fodder for this blog through the winter, eh?

Eccociqua! We’re back! Starting Friday a whole new series of great American food as it can be made in Italy. Every recipe will as always be in English and Italian. It’s like the first day back at school for us, and we are standing here in our new shoes and with our new pencils ready to go. We’ve been batting around and sharing out a list of some of the most delicious American dishes there are, besides us, of course.

A reminder: if you would like to join us and can translate your recipe into Italian, we’d love to have you.

Hot under the collar:
Want to read some of what I think about this importantissimo election in the USA? Here, here and here are some articles that say it better than I can at the moment. My throat is too full of bitter gall to make sweet sense. Bleeding Espresso has also had some well-weighed words to offer.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Italy, Favorite Blogs, Italian food, cucina, cucina americana