Food History

A few weeks ago I thought I had suddenly aged ten years. Maybe twenty. I kept dreaming of flavours of Passover past. This is one of the reasons I gave you those posts about my notebook (they will return, when I have time to get back to them). “I’m getting old and grouchy,� I told myself. “Even dried fruit was different forty years ago.� Maybe it was time to buy that walking stick I joke about?

A friend and I did a market visit a week ago and I found some dried plums. These prunes reminded me exactly of the dried fruit of my childhood. “How is this possible?� I thought. I memorized their details and brought some for my mother to try. I wanted to see if it was all in my imagination, or if there was something to be learned about local food history.

They were sun-dried, with no chemicals. They were angelinas. Fresh angelinas are a very dark purple and crisp and sweet and have a very slight tartness to them. The dried fruit came from a local Canberra orchard (using the Australian definition of ‘local – anything up to two hours drive away’).

My mother tried them. She didn’t speak for a minute. She, too, had been transported back to Passovers past.

It appeared she, too, had bought from a local orchard (except local to Melbourne, not to Canberra) when I was exceedingly young. There was only a little imported kosher for Passover food back then, and very few food choices at all. Everything was supplemented by dried fruit. Mum and Dad knew someone and they grew angelinas and made the most wonderful dried fruit.

And so we repeat the past without even knowing it. This means I’m still middle-aged and can’t justify that cane yet. I can still feel grouchy if I want, but right now I don’t want.

You see, the prunes were only available for a few weeks a year then, and they are now. They’re round at the tail end of summer and the beginning of autumn. This means that, around Passover every year, this particular dried fruit has been available in south-eastern Australia since the first Angelina plum tree was planted by Europeans.