Back to bloggin' ...fig chutney

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... not quite at Autumn yet.. but we appear to have had the 'fortnight of pain' hoffentlich...a curious German/Deutsch word which means more than hopefully
So we love this season...late summer..beautifully 30+ for some days this week then mid 20s. But looks like weeks of 40 s are gone.
So amidst all this there is the mellow fruitfulness of the late fruit harvest,
Chief amongst these are the figs. The gentle succulent fruit, which fits the SA climate because we are Mediterranean.

I picked a bag and a half from the youngest S Clark's tree yesterday....and will be back to pick more tomorrow!!....I suppose we enjoyed eating half of them. I just think they are so gentle and beautiful, and your insides feel good when you eat figs.
Any way what do you do with them when they ripen so quickly and need to be dealt with, otherwise they are wasted.
So I have made some fig and tomato chutney this afternoon.
Simple ingredients of tomatoes, figs, brown sugar, serious vinegar (viz brown,caramelised, balsamic...and I used a bit of guava. Serious amounts a garlic...we Australians are like that...and onion. A cinammon stick really lifts the flavour...and ginger ( pickled or fresh.. or both), mustard seeds and coriander. I will also add fresh basil.
I think the figs just receive the blessing of companion foods.
I am resisting the temptation to add chili...maybe tomorrow's iteration.

God bless the season of mists and figly fruitfulness

momentous momentum

In a week which has seen all sorts of things happen it will be interesting to check back and see if it has all made much difference.
It has been for me a great mixture. From the grand scale of the beginning of of the presidency of Barck Obama, to dinner with friends last night...a sort of annual check up.
Which, in my scheme of things, is more important?
Yesterday,too, I took a funeral of the mother of a parishioner. A momentous and unexpected event for that family; from teary ten year old grandson to teary 40 something year old devastated daughter.
Heath Ledger was nominated for an academy award for a film I can't bear to see, on the first anniversary of his death by drug overdose (whether deliberate or accidental) which I blogged about this time last year (here)
I went to the doctor yesterday to get a couple opf routine referrals and came away anaemic and feeling that I had a hundred things wrong with me.
The Premier was in rapture on radio because Tour Down Under was being reported on the front page of the New York Times.
I noted at dinner last night that the much touted economic woes seemed to have been allowed to drift into the back of our minds. It was not that they have gone away it is that we are easily distracted, even desirous of being so.
It's a lot of stuff for one week.
And the tomatoes have just kept coming!

Harvest

Have I become a farmer? For the last three days I have actually eaten the fruit of my labour.Whilst not actually managing to get a tomato (yet...still green)...tonight we will have a tomato (from the shop...quite cricket ball like) and rocket and basil salad (from the garden). The rocket was delicious tasty and sweet (even though parishioner J and I did have a conversation last Sunday which implied that rocket probably grew (as a weed) in our gardens long before we planted it !!)
I long for the first red tomato...there are plenty of green ones and lots of flowers. My dad would be proud. Laus tibi Domine!