FIGS

A delightful discovery at our house this morning: We have a fig tree!!! A friend had told me this, but it didn't really register at the time, and I wasn't sure if I remembered correctly. I noticed it was bearing fruit, and I suddenly had visions of all I could do with those figs! Just to be sure, I took a branch of it to the nursery and the botanist there said it was definitely a fig, we can certainly eat them, and we should consider ourselves quite lucky, because they are delicious! So, we chopped them up and made homemade fig newtons today. Well, somewhere between fig newtons and fig crisp. It was good! Here's what I learned about figs today as I researched on the computer:

There are hundreds of varieties of figs, all with a common soft flesh with a plentitude of tiny edible seeds. Figs range in color from purple-black to almost white and from round to oval. Figs are the sweetest of all fruits, with a 55% sugar content. Although considered a fruit, the fig is actually a flower inverted into itself. Figs were brought to North America by the Spanish Franciscan missionaries, who set up missions in southern California, hence the now-popular Mission or Black Mission fig. Other popular varieties are the Adriatic (green skin, white flesh); Brown Turkey (pear shape, violet to brown skin); Calimyrna/Smyrna (large, squat white flesh, green skin); Celeste (medium pear shape, purple ski, pink pulp); Kadota (small, thick skin, yellow-green fruit); Magnolia/Brunswick (large, pink-yellow flesh, amber skin). Figs are sold fresh,candied, dried or canned in sugar syrup or water.

We found them to be a brown-purple-redish color -- just beautiful!