Fruits of the Season

I love this time of year! Beginning in October, the food is wonderful, and I enjoy the holidays so much, partly because of certain foods that are not available in their freshest, most natural form the rest of the year. These are three of my favorites, and it's only coincidental that they all begin with the letter "P" (though that's kind of interesting, I guess).

 Persimmons, pomegranates, and pumpkins, oh my! There are two kinds of persimmons, Fuyu and Hachiya, and while both are delicious, they're quite different. The Fuyus, like the ones in this picture, look like squatty tomatoes, and can be eaten while they're still firm, though a deeper color indicates a deeper, sweeter flavor. Hachiyas have pointy bottoms and you must let them get quite soft (at which point you can cut them in half and scoop the flesh out of the peel with a spoon) or else they're very astringent - you've never really puckered up till you've tried to eat an unripe Hachiya! The color will change and cracks will begin to develop in the skin - just be patient enough to wait that long. Fuyus can also get pretty soft and keep getting sweeter and more delicious but you don't have to wait before eating them. The pumpkins in this picture go by different names in different countries, Muscat (or Musquée) de Provence in France, Calabaza Castiliana in Spain and Mexico. They're as decorative as they are delicious, for any of the many things you can make with ordinary pumpkin.

 We have a pomegranate plant and I thought we'd get a good crop this year at last. I sprayed them with insecticidal soap to keep the pomegranate bugs off, but then I became less vigilant and suddenly the bugs were attacking! By then the fruits were ripe, so I picked them and determined I'd caught them just in time - no harm done. The easiest way to separate out the seeds with their juicy, sweet, jewel-like surrounding is to quarter the fruit and then drop the sections in a large bowlful of water, where you can pull the seeds away from the membrane. The seeds will sink, the peels and membranes will float, and you can just skim off what you don't want and throw it in the compost.

When I was a little girl my grandmother always bought a few pomegranates around Christmas time and we just ate the seeds as a special treat. Since then, of course, all kinds of delicious pomegranate products have appeared on the market; juice is just the beginning. I still prefer them in their most natural state, though. The salad above was especially yummy, just mixed baby greens, wedges of peeled persimmon, and pomegranate seeds, with a white balsamic vinaigrette (http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/salad%20dressing). In fact, I think I'll make another one just like it for Christmas Eve dinner!

A Trip to the Orchard

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Rory, who lived with her mommy and daddy in Tucson, Arizona, where it gets very, very hot in the summertime. So one day their friends Joe and Vicki decided it would be nice to take a drive over to Willcox, Arizona, where the elevation is higher and the temperatures cooler, and where Apple Annie's Orchard (appleannies.com) is, to see what Apple Annie had to offer and just to get out of town for the day.

 When they got to Apple Annie's, the nice lady told them where the different kinds of fruit were and gave them wagons and buckets and they headed out to look for some peaches, and they found lots of them. The lady had said they could sample all they wanted, so all four grown-ups and Rory probably ate more peaches than they ever had at one time in any of their lives, and picked lots more to buy to take home.

 After they'd picked all the peaches they wanted, they headed over to another part of the orchard to look for apples and Asian pears. Rory was tired of riding in the wagon so she got out to explore.

The Asian pears were just as abundant and just as delicious as the peaches! More tasting and more picking followed,
 

and Rory also found some Bartlett pear trees. By then her face was sticky with peach juice and bits of Asian pear, but she was very happy.

Even though it was cooler in Willcox than in Tucson, it was still plenty warm. They looked for apples, but not very hard, because it was getting to be lunch time, and besides, it's still early in the season. There will be more apples in a few weeks. They did try some Criterion apples like this one, and found them sweet and tasty.

 After purchasing the fruit they'd picked, as well as some jalapeño chocolate fudge in the gift shop, they went to Apple Annie's other site, where you can pick your own vegetables (the pumpkins won't be ready for another month) but the grown-ups were feeling lazy so they just bought some flying saucer squash and other summer squash, green beans, and tomatoes from the big walk-in cooler. Rory tried to shut her mommy and daddy in the cooler but Vicki and Joe talked her out of it. And then they all got back in the car and drove into town where they had lunch at Big Tex BBQ restaurant, which is actually a bright red converted railroad car, where the food was hearty and meaty, and where the staff were exceptionally nice.
      Then they all went back home to Tucson, happy and with full tummies. When Vicki and Joe got back to their house, they found that some of their perfect peaches had gotten a few bruises, so Vicki blanched those, peeled and sliced them and tossed them with a little lemon juice so they wouldn't turn brown (they were so sweet they really didn't need any sugar). Next morning for breakfast she microwaved some whole wheat pancakes that happened to be in the freezer and she and Joe topped them with nonfat sour cream, a tiny sprinkle of brown sugar (just because it's so nice with sour cream), then put the warmed peaches with their juices over it all. And it was very, very good.

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember

   When the year grows old—

October—November—

   How she disliked the cold!

Those lines by Edna St. Vincent Millay remind me of growing up in Idaho and of my grandmother, who in her later years seemed to get much colder than the rest of us (today my mother says the same thing, and that it's just part of aging).  Yesterday a friend posted pictures of her house in Ontario, Oregon, just a few miles on the other side of the Snake River from where we grew up.  The snow on the roof and blanketing the yard was so clean and fresh and beautiful. 

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

   The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

   Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

   And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

   Were beautiful to her!

     Both of those stanzas express my own feelings - it's not either/or, inside or outside. I love it all, and I miss winter, real winter, though even here in Tucson we don't have to go too far to find snow to play in, just up Mt. Lemmon on the northeast edge of town, or for a weekend, Flagstaff is only 4 hours away.

     

Things change as the year grows old, and I love watching those changes.  There is a beauty in decrepitude, in fading, in the graceful death we see in nature.  The fallen pomegranates in the picture at the top shrivel and dry but first they nourish the ants and the other little things that live in the soil, and the soil itself.  This picture shows three stages in the life of a morning glory: the shrunken, dried blossom, its earlier bright blue beauty unimaginable unless you've watched the plant and know its processes; a plump green seedpod that will soon mature into a crisp fawn-colored case for the precious product the plant has lived and died for - the hard black seeds that will grow into next year's flowers.

     Our milder desert winters aren't all about death or, as in the story of Persephone and her pomegranate, about putting the world to sleep for half the year.  The cooler temperatures revitalize some things and fall is the best time for planting others, like native plants - cacti, mesquite and palo verde trees.  It's also the best time to start a vegetable garden, and I love being able to grow my own salad and cooking greens, snow peas, turnips, and other things.  We're much more limited in summer, which can feel more like a survival marathon, especially when the monsoons don't come, as they didn't this last summer, when the only crop that really did well was okra.

     Roses thrive here - that came as a surprise to me - and this bud was just beginning to open yesterday.  It's on the climber my friend Charlene gave me when she moved from Tucson, and it's been very happy up against the old gray fence that separates the area where we hang out the laundry and store unused plant pots from the rest of the yard.  Unfortunately, the red climber she gave me at the same time didn't do so well and I finally gave up and took it out a few weeks ago when I gave the roses their September pruning, though the white JFK is doing very well.  This climber produced flowers all summer but they faded quickly, going from bud to falling blossoms in two or three days.  But now they last over a week and some are pushing two weeks, and as this next picture shows, there is still great beauty in their decrepitude.

Isn't it wonderful how they change colors?  I wouldn't have imagined this would happen, and yet right now there are half a dozen like this.  It's like having three or four different rose bushes all in one!  The only constant is change, they say, and we must embrace change or die.  The only way to keep this rose from changing would be to deadhead it before it comes into full bloom, and that would certainly be a shame.

      When I lived in Idaho we were very conscious of the seasons and the harvests, much more than most people are now, I believe.  And when I took my mother on vacation up there I was sad to see that almost all the orchards that filled the Emmett valley are gone, as are the fruit packing sheds where my grandmother worked during the Great Depression, and off and on for years afterwards.  Here's what's left of one of the only two of those sheds still standing, that was once filled with the sound of conveyor belts and women's talk and laughter as they sorted and packed the fruit for which the valley was famous.

At first it made me sad to see it like this, but when I stopped and got out of the car, walked around and went inside, it was also peaceful.  I remember going there with my grandmother, and one of her friends picking out a red Delicious apple and polishing it on his sleeve for me. I remember the simple pleasure of honest labor, and of hands moving quickly and gently over the fruits of the earth, and it makes me smile.

      Apples and some other trees aren't the best choice for our particular micro-climate (though there are wonderful orchards over in Wilcox, less than two hours away) but citrus trees love it.  I noticed last night (after the opera - a delightful student production of Britten's Albert Herring that had the audience laughing out loud in appreciation of its broad humor) that the kumquats are nearly ripe around one of the parking lots, and I'm having fantasies of "liberating" some.

Our little Meyer lemon tree has two big, beautiful fruits nearly ripe.  We expected more given the explosion of blossoms it produced, but we're grateful for these and will, when the time comes, put them to good use.  That's what I hope for all of us as autumn turns to winter, that we will put our time and ourselves to good use.  Stay warm.  Appreciate the season.  Be well.

Fruits of Autumn

I have a friend who was recently waxing eloquent on the joys of persimmons, which have just appeared in our markets.  So sweet, so delicate, with flesh like a quivering orange jewel, they are a transitory pleasure; like the fresh figs of a month or two ago, they won't be around for long, so in my opinion it's all right to make gluttons of ourselves.  I didn't taste persimmons until I was a grown-up but I remember a photograph I saw in a book, of Japanese children in the snow, shaking a leafless persimmon tree loaded with bright fruit.  I don't know if they would have been a viable crop in Idaho, where I grew up, but certainly no one grew them, at least no one that I know of.

     It's also prime season for fresh pears, which I  didn't fully appreciate until a few years ago, having grown up eating the canned variety.   But look at these!  The  red, like the princess in a fairy tale, more easily bruised than some,  so  we'll eat those first,  then the more common but still noble Bartlett,  which  sometimes  blushes  a bit,  and  the  sturdy  brown  Bosc, wonderful for poaching, but we'll probably eat these raw with a nice pungent cheese.  Though pears are more common than some fruits, they are a sensual delight, and prices are low--'tis the season. Let's treat ourselves!