A Plum By Any Other Name

Plums have charisma.

Besides being baked into tarts, stewed into jam, and stuffed into pork roast, they are a fruit with symbolic chops. They are thought to be a good omen. They can signify both purity and fertility.

The English language is lousy with plums in poems and sayings.  They have been romanticized about and sexed up. See "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams and you will know what I mean. Yet, they have a stone fruit stepsister that is vilified as much as the plum is revered: the prune.

Where plums got purity and hope, prunes got constipation. Where plums got sex, prunes got nursing homes. But things are about to change for the prune. Refer to it as a dried plum, if you must. Say prune with a French accent if it pleases you. 

Prunes, from here on out, will be used as inspiration on how to eat and live. Because what matters in the kitchen, and in life, is what something is, not what it is called. 

This blog will touch upon how to cook good food and live and, with any luck, offer a little comfort when the pot of life boils over.