fig tree variety nursery source in the u.s.

in doing some research about cedar trees, i discovered a link for a U.S. nursery supplying a great variety of fig trees with lots of information. it is called Trees of Joy. here's the link:

http://www.treesofjoy.com/fig-varieties-collection

they also sell pomegranate, persimmon, and jujube, which i tasted for the first time in our lebanese village, douma!

Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking will be at the Wilsonville Festival of the Arts Sunday, June 2 in the Literary Plaza

Linda Dalal Sawaya will be sampling fig-filled cookies at the Wilsonville Festival of the Arts on Sunday, June 2 in the Literary Plaza as she signs and sells copies of Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking! I will also have a few copies of The Sweets of Araby, a dessert book that I illustrated with stories from the 1001 Arabian Nights, published by Countryman Press!

Be sure to mention you saw my blog post for a special discount on cookbooks! And be sure to taste a fabulous lebanese fig cookie and say hi!

It looks like a great arts festival and the weather will be perfect!

blessings and happy cooking!

summer's officially over...but dried figs provide summer sweetness all year long!

two ways to cut fresh summer figs to dry and preserve them for winter delights! 

my garden and i are blessed with several varieties of fig trees that do well in the pacific northwest. this year's crop came all at once even though the varieties normally ripen in a delightful flow over july, august, and september because of our cool and late summer. drying them is a traditional way to keep them for the winter, as well as making fig jam.

my tried and true way of drying them has been to cut the juicy moist and plump fruits in half after removing the stems, leaving them connected at the blossom end, and placing them on food dryer trays. 

this summer after having dried two full batches in my habitual way, i remembered visiting my dear aunt adele in los angeles a couple of years ago and seeing her just-harvested figs from the trees that my uncle edmond had planted years before he passed away drying in her sewing room on trays in the warm LA breeze. 

she cut them into a 4-pointed star shape—much prettier and faster drying than my halvsies, even when presented on a beautiful wooden dish from India and sprinkled with almonds—a great serving combination.

now you can see auntie adele's inspiring designer cut figs and how they fit like mosaic pieces on the drying try! pretty! and you can see the normally early crop (green outside, light inside) next to the july crop (green outside, red inside) of Desert King, both of which ripened in august/september!

see how much they shrink when dried, which in pacific northwest climate with my food dryer takes about two days.

no recipe needed for this simple treat if you have the abundance of fresh summer figs! mama's fig jam recipe with walnuts and aniseed is in Alice's Kitchen on page 213! happy eating!

laham mishwi! shish kebab! skewered grilled lamb lebanese alice's kitchen style! authentic lebanese mountain cuisine!

growing up in los angeles' climate provided many opportunities for summer barbeques. our all-time favorite was laham mishwi, which literally means grilled meat. in alice's kitchen that meant lamb, following her douma mountain village tradition. 

mama would buy a big leg of lamb, since los angeles supermarket butchers in those days didn't sell cuts of lamb as did the old country village butchers. she and sitto, my grandmother, spent tedious hours in the kitchen cutting the leg of lamb into various cuts for specific dishes: some for kibbee, some for mishwi, little pieces for stuffed meat pies, slightly larger pieces for stews. it was an art form she perfected as well as a labor of love. 

mama made the process of cutting a leg of lamb an anatomy lesson and it is illustrated in alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking with black and white photos of mama cutting the lamb. the recipe for laham mishwi is on page 79 in the cookbook.

i was fortunate to find excellent fresh halal lamb at a new local Palestinian grocery store aptly named JERUSALEM. my only task was to cut it off the bone and remove the "bad" fat, which mama described as the dry, chalky fat, which gives lamb an unpleasant flavor. my little doggie, baba, loved the bones!

mama's recipe is simple enough: chopped onions, salt, black pepper, and cinnamon tossed together and chilled to marinate a couple of hours before skewering.

ready for the grill! since the cuts of meat are fairly small, the cooking time is brief—about 4 minutes on each side.

mama's tradition to use a piece of arabic bread and hold the skewer to slide the grilled meat and onions onto a platter made us all fight for that bread that had the lamb juices embedded in it. i forgot to photograph this—we were all drooling and ready for the main course even though we had mezza (appetizers) galore!

the occasion for this long time vegetarian to make this lebanese specialty? my dear friends rima, bashar, and haitham were returning to lebanon. so we had a feast for their going away dinner party. 

the rest of the menu included fresh garden salata, green beans (loubiyeh) grilled with garlic and olive oil, hommus, baba ghannouj, mhammara, lebne, and of course a platter of figs for dessert. all of these can be found on this blog with recipes in the cookbook! one surprise was a bowl of fresh garbanzo beans in the shell purchased at a local grocery with a great international clientele that is worker owned, called Winco. these are not readily found in the U.S. and my guests were delighted. i will pick up some more and photograph them soon.

you can see the fig tree laden with figs behind bashar, who devoured the baba ghannouj while waiting for his parents to arrive and the kebabs to grill! bashar came to my kids' art class when he was around 6 years old; now he's 14 and over 6' tall with an appetite to match! Smallah!

bon voyage to them and bon appetite to all on this labor day weekend!