Strange Fruit
One of the trees in our yard is a Medlar tree, which is of European descent. It's hardy, attractive and frost tolerant. Despite our tree having been planted less than a year ago, it's provided us with a good harvest of fruit for its size, despite the dry summer. To add to the tree's praises, it's one of the few fruits which are in season during winter, with the fruit just reaching the ripe stage now. Despite all this, medlar fruit are rarely available commercially.

Having had my first experience with this fruit recently, it's not surprising to see why. the fruit are about half the size of my thumb. While still immature, they're hard, orange-to-red, and taste something between pear and apple. However, while the immature fruit are nice, they're only slightly less hard than granite. The "mature" fruit are quite a different experience. One day, your lovely reddish fruit will have turned both the colour and consistancy of rotten apple. This fermentation caused by natural yeasts transforms the hard, inedible fruit into a sweet, soft, squishy delicacy. It tastes something akin to unsweetened apple sauce.

Picking and transporting the immature fruit would be a breeze, but convincing the public that something which has self-fermented is good to eat is another matter. Eating my first medlar was quite a leap of faith, all my previous experiences in puting brown squishy fruit into my mouth have been bad.

I'm looking forward to next winter, when I'm sure we'll have a larger crop and will be able to share this unique experience with more friends.

Pasta
Purchased an inexpensive pasta-maker and have been eating freshly made pasta for probably two-thirds of all meals since. Making pasta is quite simple, doesn't take much time, and tastes fantastic. Mind you, using five eggs per 500g of flour makes me happy that we've got chickens, although with the short days they've dropped to laying only 3-4 eggs/day.

The pasta-maker, while having a lifetime guarantee, has already broken the clamp which is used to affix it to the table-top. With a molded-plastic handle, I'm not at all surprised that it didn't last long. I'll be returning to the shop in the next few days along with receipt, guarantee, and poorly made clamp in hand.