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Volume 16 Number 28
US Library of Congress ISSN: 1530-3292
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RECIPE DU JOUR
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Pear and Dried Fig Pie
1 cup dried Calimyrna figs (5 1/2 oz.), stemmed and quartered
1 cup water
1/4 cup plus 1/3 cup sugar; plus 1/2 Tbsp. more, for sprinkling
1/2 of a vanilla bean
6 medium Bartlett or Bosc pears (3 lb.)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Rolled-out pastry dough for a double-crust 9-inch pie, chilled
Combine figs, water and 1/4 cup sugar in a small saucepan; split vanilla bean lengthwise, scrape out seeds and add seeds and bean to saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Cook until figs are soft, about 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer figs to a small bowl and set aside. Continue simmering syrup until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 10 minutes more. Let cool.
Peel, quarter and core pears, then thinly slice crosswise, place in a large bowl and toss gently with lemon juice. Add cornstarch, 1/3 cup of remaining sugar, and reserved figs and syrup. Mix until combined.
Put rack in bottom third of oven; preheat oven to 400F. Fit 1 piece of dough into a 9-inch pie pan. Spoon in pear mixture. Top with second piece of dough. Trim and crimp edge. Brush top lightly with water and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 Tbsp. sugar. Cut several vents in crust. Bake for about 1 hour, until crust is golden (filling should be boiling). Let cool completely before serving. Makes 8 servings.
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Nutritional Information
Amount per serving
Calories: 438
Fat: 15g
Saturated fat: 6g
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrate: 80g
Fiber: 7g
Cholesterol: 10mg
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AT THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
By Walter Mills
In the Days of Noah
We think of Methuselah as being the old man of the Bible, but all of the early patriarchs were rather long lived, in their 900’s when they died, including old Adam.
What this means, according to the Bible story book for children that I was perusing while waiting for the vet to take a look at Tuesday, our cat, is that there were people still alive in Noah’s time who had known Adam, the original patriarch, who spent his early days in the Garden of Eden.
As a boy who grew up listening to Bible stories by the bushel basket full, I don’t know why this struck me as surprising. But can you imagine the kind of stories you might have heard if you had stopped by Adam’s house of an afternoon nine hundred years after his expulsion from paradise? You might find him wandering in memory through the Garden of Eden with his young bride – “Oh, you should have seen Eve in those days, was she a looker.” Or in answer to a question about how he named the animals – “Of course I know that dog is God spelled backwards, it was supposed to be a joke.”
I hope it is not sacrilegious to imagine that those people from Biblical times were in many ways similar to us. I hope that they kidded each other when a camel spit on someone’s sandal, that the moms bragged on their kids – “That Solomon of mine, he is so smart.”
But it was Noah that I thought of, looking at pictures of the ark in the book – especially the flood.
It must have been a January thaw like we had in Pennsylvania three winters ago. The ice and snow covered the ground all the way up to the trees at the top of Egg Hill. Then the temperature rose into the 50s and the rains began to fall. By midday the flooding had gotten bad in Spring Mills and in the town of Coburn downstream.
By the time I reached home in the early afternoon, Sinking Creek had flooded its banks and I had to park the truck in the elementary school parking lot and wade through the waist deep water on School Street to get home.
The melting snow up on the hill was coming down through the yard and under the barn and flowing through the basement windows into the house. Our neighbors had brought over a pump and set it up on the basement steps before I even reached home – a godsend. I took the pump down further into the basement and saw the freezer floating upside down in the water, packages of frozen peas bobbing beside it. A basketball floated past in the dark cold water that was up to mid thigh.
I spent the afternoon until early evening in the dark basement with the pump spitting a thin stream of liquid snow and rain out through a window into the yard. Elsewhere cars were floating away into swollen creeks and the town of Coburn was inundated by Penns Creek.
In the morning we got up to find that our driveway had disappeared into huge ruts and our car was stranded as if on an island up by the barn. It would be ten days before we could have the roadway filled in and bring the car safely down.
Old Noah spent a bit more time than that with the smelly dingoes and the fruit bats up in the rafters of the ark. It must have been a dark and musty time before the skies finally cleared and the rainbow showed the smiling face of God on the calm waters. Noah lived another 300 plus years, and I imagine, back on the solid ground, he had some stories for the next generation or twenty. I can see him out in the yard with the barbecue going and a fatted calf turning on the spit, glancing up now and then at the sky to check for rain.
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Read more of Walt’s writing at his blog:
http://americanimpressionist.wordpress.com/
(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is copyright © 2013 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To contact Walt, address your emails to awmills@verizon.net ).
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