Thoughts from the Back of the Fridge

One of the end-of-summer treats I’ve enjoyed have been pomegranates. From their beautiful beginnings as a frill of flaming red blossom on the skinny tree in my parent’s backyard to the hard, dark red fruits that my mother sent us out onto the back porch to eat. I’m used to fighting with my Dad over the ones I take from his tree — he’s such a pomegranate hog — and enjoying the bursts of piquant tart-sweetness against my tongue. My little sister occasionally still calls them Bugs, because I told her they were insect larvae when she was about four. (Of course, for that reason, she immediately decided to eat them. Go figure.)

D. brought me two pomegranates a week ago, and they’re not the deep jeweled red that I’m used to, but a faded pink. Instead of the bursts of tart sweetness I’ve enjoyed, these pomegranates are quite sweet — startlingly so — with no tartness whatsoever. I’m sure there are various kinds of pomegranates, but I’ve only ever had the one, so I must admit that I was briefly painfully disappointed at the differences. However, instead of these being a taste of home, they are the flavor of a farther shore, perhaps a sultry Persian backyard, where a girl swathed in silks is happily and stickily consuming fruit. At least that’s what I tell myself…

Autumn has so far favored us with a bit of hard squash! Acorn squash is almost — almost a substitute for our favorite kabocha squash. They at least look enough like pumpkins to make us happy!

We’ve enjoyed them in soups during these windy cold days, and have great hopes that we can find one big enough to make it worthwhile to make pumpkin ravioli! Can’t waste that good semolina flour, right? Wondering what we’ll put ON or IN ravioli? We’re working on a fabulous seitan sausage with lots of sage, mushrooms and black pepper that will match really well with a creamy white sauce and pasta… we’ll get back to you on that…

By now, Cake Wrecks has become a Blogger institution, probably because most people love looking at decorated cakes, and like it better if the professionally made cakes look like something they could have pulled off themselves. (Ah, schadenfreude.) We get a kick out of looking at the decorated cakes in the shops around here, but let me say this: at HR Bradfords (Baker), there’s not a wreck amongst them.

Most of the time, people who wander down Sauchiehall St. downtown are headed for the much ballyhooed Willow Tea Rooms, snazzily designed by Art Deco dude Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1904. While lovely, yes, the Willow rooms are fairly pricey and not the only tea rooms in town by a long shot. Glasgow apparently invented tea rooms in the 1830’s, so we are told. Europe was famous for coffee houses… and Glasgow for tea rooms, in response to what must have been a rather short-lived temperance movement when they were more popular than pubs.*cough*

Anyway, at the back of the shop at HR Bradfords, away from the window full of cakes and the glass-fronted cases full of pastries and cookies and all the brownies that you don’t really need? Is a stairway leading to a full-scale tea room, where wait staff wear the traditional black and white livery and escort you to a table.

We didn’t have time to do more than dine-and-dash last time we were there (they do have a decent vegetarian sausage pastry), but we’re going to go back and have a proper sit-down soon, and we’re looking forward to it.

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