Loot

This year's abundance started off with bright orange berries on bushes at our park I had not ever realized were edible. It took  my observing a blond Swedish mom with little kids picking some so as to make jelly (and complaining how many it took to make only a small batch) that I got the idea to give them too a try. Not a fan of jelly, I would grab a handful and place them on a pancake. The refreshing, subtly sweet and tart explosion of taste when grinding teeth would pop those berries was delightful.

Next came the apricots and they were littering the streets, it is a shame how perfectly good fruit gets wasted while so many still go hungry, especially in our state. So I have no compulsion about picking fruit off trees that overhang public streets and neither have my pups. My little Sumo-boy absolutely loves sweet and ripe fruit, but will reject any other kind. I fed them so many apricots in between gathering the fruit in to my basket, that I got worried about their intestinal plumbing. But all was well, my pups suffered no observable ill effect from eating too many apricots, hallelujah!

I worked those apricots in to a spicy compote concocted from a mix of spices that included ginger, cancer fighting tumeric and a dash of infection fighting cayenne, unbeatable as a topping to vanilla icecream (there did go my dairy abstinence, but not for long. Life is too short to worry about a slip.)

Apricots made in to a simple pie, what we would call 'Aprikose Waehe' is one of my very favorites, and a staple food for meat free Fridays.

In the back of our home we do have one pear tree and I got to gather a few pears, most though got eaten by birds or fell off the tree never having reached maturity. In fact I am rather surprised how much fruit never reaches what must be an inherent goal to any organism - maturity. I realize this may be just the same on a human level, oh no, this touches a personal soft spot! My friend Rui from Madeira Portugal used to make pear pies with an arrow root glaze and distribute them all over Amsterdam. Today I just lightly cooked the few pears so as to save them from the fruit flies. They will make for a welcome change as a topping over a hot breakfast cereal.

Apples are currently aplenty and I pick some up almost everyday, careful to avoid picking the too small ones, but rather give them time to fully mature on the risk of course that others may take them. Those green apples that grow in my 'hood are great for cooking, but a bit sour for eating raw. I discovered that apple sauce just like apricot compote makes for an excellent carrier for tumeric of which I hear more and more accounts of it's benefits, such as relieve from joint pain due to inflammation.

Our community garden this year is devoid of cilantro, so no salsa for me so far, but I might look forward to an ear or two of corn. It astounds me that my downtown 'hood offers so much free food for the taking, something I had discovered only 2 years ago in 2010.