Thursday, December 1, 2005

fruit topping

I think I inherited the baking gene from my Grandma Meyer. Yesterday I took a break from memorizing vocabulary and what did I do? I baked a persimmon spice cake. It was delicious.

Persimmon, or kaki in Japanese, are everywhere right now. During the hour and half train ride through the countryside to Mt. Koya last weekend there wasn’t a time when I couldn’t see a heavily laden kaki tree out the window. Some hikers were saying how they kept passing orchards and orchards, and finally couldn’t stand it - they swiped a few.

Persimmons are not something you see regularly in the United States, but there are two varieties in Japan. The first is the sweet kind that you eat when fresh and crisp. The second is sour and is picked, strung up, and dried to be eaten later. My host family from a couple years ago has several of the trees in their garden and every year they can’t give enough of the fruit away. I remember dessert for a month being freshly picked kaki. Yum.

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