A Little Relief
The big deal around here is that it’s actually raining, hard, right now.
That shows what an exciting life I lead. The last time it rained, though, was in May, more than six weeks ago. We’ve had the driest June on record in this part of Texas, with maybe a quarter-inch of rain in a month that usually has 5-8 inches. A lot of garden plants died prematurely, and a lot of the tropicals are pretty stressed, because the localized drought included temperatures averaging above 95 degrees.
We’ll be lucky if we get a half-inch today, but enough has fallen so far that I can put off my watering chores for the evening. I was soaking the back garden one night, the “garage garden” and bananas the second night and the tropical plants the next.
And the water bill was getting a little out of hand.
The only plants seemingly unaffected by the dry & heat have been the figs. Despite frenetic feeding by the birds and squirrels, we’ve still managed a nice harvest of Brown Turkey figs from the monster bush out back each day for the past week or so.
They’re great fresh, but this variation was rather tasty last night:
—Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees (F)
—Cut the ends off of perhaps 20 ripe figs, then cut them in half length-wise and lay them cut side up in a lightly greased baking pan or cookie sheet.
—Combine a third of a cup of honey with a third of a cup of good sipping whiskey in a sauce pan and bring to a boil while stirring. Turn off the heat.
— Drizzle a little of the resulting syrup over each fig.
—Put the baking pan full of figs in the oven and allow to bake for 5-10 minutes, until they soften slightly.
—This is the part where you eat them.
→ B.Dunn, Jul 13, 2005, 04 44 pm
