The other day I was flipping through my trusty Good Housekeeping cookbook, as I tend to do more often during the winter months, and I learned something new. First of all, Good Housekeeping and Betty Crocker, two of my standby cookbooks here in Ukraine, have been indispensable in my quest to familiarize myself with the foreign foods and ingredients I encounter here. The single reason they have been so helpful is their color photos. Labeled picture charts of beans, grains, fruits, vegetables and herbs have been very handy. I don’t have a Russian-English food dictionary, so many times, even if I learn the Russian name of something, I don’t really know what it is or how it’s translated into English – until I look at my picture charts. Back to the other day – I discovered a new fruit without even trying. Persimmons. I opened up my cookbook and there was a picture of those mystery orange-ish fruits that I frequently see at the market. I always thought they might be half-ripened tomatoes, but somehow that didn’t seem very plausible. I was especially happy to make this discovery as temperatures here plummet into single digits (negative digits in Celsius) and the fresh fruits of summer and fall seem particularly distant. The day after my discovery, I bought three persimmons, which are now ripening on the counter and will soon be used in some new recipe. I have my eye on a couple in MCC’s new “Simply in Season” cookbook.
Laura
