It’s mid September and the current “fruit of the Season” here in Italy is figs! We have a large fig tree on our property and I have been walking past the fig tree for months eyeing the dangling figs, I reach up and squeeze one hoping it would be ripe but the waiting continued. Finally it is fig season and they are ripe and ready for harvesting.
Keeping with the theme of “Summers Bounty” and trying to keep up with all of the zucchini’s pouring out of the garden this time of the year, I offer you this classic recipe for Zucchini Bread.
Lemon Meringue pie is an American Classic, we have made it in my family for years and everyone loves it. Recently, here in Italy we were having problems with our cell phone carrier, they kept charging us for extra fees and we had no idea why because the fees were explained in Italian and it didn’t translate well to English when we used Google translate, But our good friend Davide came to our rescue. With a brief phone call to our carrier he resolved our problem and even got some cash back! So for a reward he simply asked for a pie, a lemon meringue pie. Well, that’s easy enough!
So we have passed our first week in our new house in the Itri hills in Italy. It was a week of hauling our things to the new house an hour and a half away. A hectic week of getting situated and figuring out how things work in the new place. But what better way to cozy up in a new house then to bake a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies?
Many of us in America have never heard of Pavlova, but it is almost the National Dessert of Australia and New Zealand. It has been hotly debated which country invented this dessert but we do know that it was concocted for the ballet dancer Anna Povlova during her tour of Australia and New Zealand. The dessert is a light base of meringue topped with fresh fruit and whipped cream. It is as ethereal as the dancer herself.
So I am back home in California after living in Italy for a year and a half. We will only be home for three months, working and visiting with friends and family before we return to Italy again. As a side point I am enjoying such novelties as a good heater in my house, a powerful shower head in a roomy bathroom and a dryer to dry my clothes!
During a recent dinner party I felt bad serving Tiramasu to our guests and leaving out my Keto crazy husband. So in an act of solidarity I got busy looking for a dessert he could have on the Keto diet. He had already bought a sugar substitute in the form of Erythritol so I was ready to create something delicious for him.
Persimmons are a fruit you either love or hate. In the Central Valley of California where I grew up, Persimmon Trees were plentiful, yet mostly unloved by most people. But how can you not admire a fruit that dares to sport a bright orange color during a time when all other fruit trees are shedding their leaves barren of fruit? In fact, I have memories of the bold, plump, orange persimmon fruit dangling on bare branches in the cold months of winter. I remember looking at this strange tree in a field of fog, barren of all leaves but the orange fruit still clings tight to its branch.
The Autumn air is crisp, the leaves are falling and the apples are ready for harvest. Its time to pack the family up and take a drive to the apple orchards and partake of the yearly tradition of picking apples.
