August 2020
Hello everyone,
A myrobolan month of July or "Back to the Future"...
For lack of sailing (Banana Split is firmly moored in a marina in Lake Macquarie, Australia, where I can't get back to it until Australia lifts the almost total closure of its borders), the current pandemic, like in Back to the Future, has thrown us into a spatio-temporal rift: you might perhaps remember the cover of an album I recorded for RCA and entitled "Groseilles 74" ?
Well, 46 years later, here we are again in our farm of Auvergne, submerged in hydrangea and bignonia flowers, plus a little late return of wisteria flowers.
If 46 years of faraway journeys have taken over the rows of raspberry and redcurrant bushes on our farm, then nature has taken over; I mentioned last month a wild cherry tree... there were actually hundreds of them, on the property and in the surrounding woods, loaded with millions, billions of cherries, small but delicious, without the slightest bitterness. And then a grove of small plum trees returned to the wild, and whose fruit I feared might be poisonous, took over; information taken (thanks to the Internet) they were prunus cerasifera, also known under the mirific name of "myrobolans" (in French, « mirobolant » means «fantastic»). To shake a branch of one of these trees was to receive a rain of delicious little fruits that had passed through all the colors of the rainbow before taking on a beautiful mauve colour. A few days later, it was small « quetsche » trees, which I don't remember at all that they were ever planted, that started to produce and gave hundreds of beautiful plums.
So Francette (whose culinary talents were hailed last month in Roanne by Michel Troisgros, who told her: "Tu touches, dis-donc!") launched into a large production of absolutely delicious jams, that of myrobolans - with a little ginger added - proving to be particularly tasty.
In the coming weeks we may have a few jars of peach from the vine, but the heat wave will have to let a few clouds of rain pass through, so that the blackberries that line our paths can finally take advantage of it, but we are already ready for a good while. And we'll still have some more to take to the boat when we can go back !
I wish you, without any doubt, an excellent month of August. Above all, masks, distance, protect yourself, you will protect others !
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