Friday, January 18, 2008

Three meditations on quince.


One: It sure is pretty. Today I mixed it with some watermelon poppies and clippings from the infamous Purple Queen plant.

Two: it makes for a hell of a jam. My neighbor Jenna cooked up a mean batch of quince jam a few weeks ago and bestowed a large jar of it to me which I cracked open yesterday morning and spread on toast. Food for the Gods! buttery, caramel fruit unctuousness!


She cooked it on and off for two days and used a bear bones recipe calling for 3 lbs of quince, 3 cups of sugar and cinnamon to taste. Quince has natural pectin (who knew) that helps it to set up without using gelatin.

Three: In Edward Lear's famous poem The Owl and The Pussy Cat, the protagonists dine on mince and slices of quince. The Owl and the Pussy Cat is also a film starring a young Barbara Streisand, who I have recently rediscovered via her famous collaboration with Barry Gibbs; Guilty (1980). If you don't know the song What Kind of Fool, well your fooling yourself - you do...and you love it as much as I do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mmm, i love quince jam. when joey and i were in france this past summer, we brought back some jars of quince jam and fig jam from the b&b we stayed at in st.frajou. one of the jars was supposed to be for you and e, but it was accidentally opened and consumed. :)