There are two things my mom asked me to bring her from home. The first is maple syrup. Real maple syrup has been essential ingredient in my pantry since I discovered it, a few months after I “moved” to the US. I use it for everything maple syrup is known to be used for and more. If you asked me what’s the secret to my — for the most part successful — experimenting with flavors, I would tell you that it is to add a little bit of maple syrup to anything that doesn’t quite taste as it was expected.
My mom got hooked on it back on 2004 when she stayed 5 weeks in my place — I used to live in Brooklyn then. One morning I made hot quinoa porridge for breakfast and finished it, as usual, with a slash of syrup. She started loving it as much as I did and got sad when she squeezed the last drops from the bottle she took back home with her. I am bringing her a quart of precious Hudson Valley syrup which is, the most mapley-tasting I’ve had. I know it’ll make her happy.
The second is Murphy’s oil which she claims cleans wood-floors like nothing else and smells great. She asked me to bring bottles of Murphy’s oil as presents for her friends. I brought 4 bottles, Scott will bring some more when he comes later on.
But there is another treasure I’m bringing her that she doesn’t know about yet: apples. Yes you can find those in Colombia — most of them imported from Chile — and there are a few local varieties, difficult to find and for the most part not worth the trouble of searching for them. But these apples that I’m bringing her are from Threshold Farm near Germantown in Columbia County where they are produced in the most honest and traditional possible way. They are biodinamic — that’s like the extreme sports version of organic and local — picked by hand and just like no other apples you have ever had. I am pretty sure I will not be eating apples until the next season… What for?
There will be plenty of delicious tropical fruits I’ll have the opportunity to eat again and I’m sure I’ll discover one or two new ones as well. But just as it is impossible to find a really good pineapple or papaya in New York state, so it is to find apples like the ones I’m bringing my mom in Colombia. It’ll be a brief pleasure — three of them is all I could fit in my carry-on luggage — but that’s part of the beauty of local, honest foods: you can’t get attached.
ps: a big thank you to my good friend Anne Dailey for making possible that we Beaconites have access to these apples and many other wonderful Hudson Valley foods…
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