Fig | Far From The Sticks

We have been vacationing in Marmaris for about a week now (more on that later). Now, we are here at a delightful time, the TIME OF THE FIG! There is nothing better and sweeter than a nice juicy ripe fig. There are trees all over the place here, lining the streets, laden with ripe heavy juicy figs. The best figs are the ones that look like they have gone bad. See that one there..

The bottom has started to split. It will be soft to the touch and if you gently squeeze it a little drop of juice will start to bulge out. PERFECT.

I am eating figs left and right. Figs with breakfast, figs as a snack, figs with wine in the garden. They do not sell them out of season, and the ones they ship to Ankara are not as nearly as tasty as the slightly misshapen ones from the garden here. Oh the figs!

It is the season of the fig, and there are fig trees all around. I grew up in New Hampshire, where figs were flown into the grocery store and sold at exorbitant prices, and were at least a week old. Here I can pick a fig off the tree and it is glorious.

I have been simultaneously trying to eat as many and few figs as possible. For this to make sense you need to know two things.

1. I love figs, tremendously.

2. Figs are natural laxatives.

Enough said.

So up in Seferhisar, the fig tree was in the neighbors yard. We still had full access to the tree, because Bulet’s uncle is married to the neighbors daughter. When it was found out how much I loved figs, I was inundated. Every morning they would pick fresh figs for me. They sent Bulent’s 12 year old cousin up into the tree to pick the best ripe ones they couldn’t get from the ground. Several times Uncle Hadi would run over with a fig in hand, saying here—this is for you, a perfect fig!! And they were. The thing about figs is that when they are ripe they are soft. The softer they are the sweeter and juicer they are, however, there is a thin line between the perfect fig, and a soured one. Right before they go bad, they are perfectly ripe. So they would run over with the perfect fig and hand it over for immediate consumption, sweet and warm from the sun. We left for Marmaris yesterday, and with us they send back several pounds of figs, in different stages of ripeness—so that I could triage.