In Love with France, At Home In Italy

OOPS! Ivy-covered walls in the Italian countryside are picturesque, but not always as innocent as they look. We thought it would be a good idea to hop into our 1999 Renault to take it for a spin. After all, the poor thing had been sitting there for far too long exercising its primary function as a fruit dryer. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that the windshield of this proud French vehicle is the linchpin of our efforts to manage all the fruit we produce. The method goes like this: put the fruit of the moment in a foil-covered IKEA roasting pan on a sunny Umbrian day, and you're good to go. Or rather, you will be going nowhere for a while, while that fruit caramelizes nicely.  The red-lit "STOP OR THIS VEHICLE WILL EXPLODE!" did not deter my optimistic husband in the least. "This car is so old that it often says alarming stuff like that, but doesn't really mean it." But I was not convinc...

What is that woman cradling in her arms ? A few more baskets of our plums, and the tree is still full! Now what ? This has got to be a new chapter in the TOO MANY???? (INSERT FRUIT OF THE MOMENT HERE) series I began last year.(see post  ACRES OF PLUMS!:NOW WHAT? from March 2011 and also TOO MANY PLUMS from August 2011)   FIRST, TOO MANY PEARS Well, this year we got a heads-up when the pears started pouring in. I did my usual lazy woman's project of cooking them slowly with a bit of sugar and lemon peel, which turned them into a beautiful sauce. But with limited freezer space and a current canning phobia and limit to how much pear sauce can be eaten, that still left plenty. Unfortunately, my neighbor in the States who made a cameo appearance in the previous "Too Many Plums" post--D, the gourmet cook--is back in her own home. She would have been whipping this fruit into ambitious creations without missing a beat. Fortunately...