FIGS!!!!

this summer i cemented my love affair with figs.  my parents have a fairly large fig tree at their shore house that produces beautiful white ones and every weekend they've been bringing home a bunch of them.  i'm the only one in my family (besides my parents) that will eat them.  i've tried to coax my youngest into giving them a shot - he loves fruit and i was sure that if he just tasted them - he'd be hooked too!  but nope - he thought they looked weird.  the tree down the shore produces just enough to eat during the week - not really enough to do anything else with them....and i had recipes i wanted to try in the worst way.

(pretend there is a picture of a bowl of beautiful white figs here! i just couldn't seem to get my camera when i had my figs!!)

now, my parents have a friend who has a tree that produces the black mission figs.  one day he dropped a box of them off at their house but they were away so they asked me if i would take the box!  finally a chance to make my recipes! i quickly ran over then got to work.

(ok - now pretend there is a picture of a box of beautiful black figs covered with huge fig leaves here!)

i had just picked up a copy of emeril's "farm to fork" book and inside was a recipe for figs in syrup.  it was incredibly easy to make and how excited was i to actually make something that looked exactly like the picture in the book!  i made 2 pints with a tiny bit left over that i put into another jar.

the second recipe i found was for spicy fig orange microwave jam  this jam is delicious!  next time i will probably just make it on the stovetop but using the microwave was super easy.  i didn't have the right sized jars so i made a pint and a little more.  i had some this morning with some sunflower seed butter on sprouted grain bread.  i could have easily just have eaten it straight out the jar.

i am sure i want to plant a fig tree in my yard.  there are many more recipes i want to try and there are just not enough figs to go around!