Yet Another Cycling Forum

Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: Wowbagger on 27 September, 2008, 12:54:07 pm

Title: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Wowbagger on 27 September, 2008, 12:54:07 pm
I take great pleasure when I sink my teeth in and then run my tongue along the groove, savouring the musky juices before sucking gently on the vibrant pink flesh contained inside.

Don't you just love fresh figs? :D
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: pcolbeck on 27 September, 2008, 12:57:42 pm
You know I have never had one. Don't know why as I love dried figs. I think I will have to buy some fresh ones now just as as to try them.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Regulator on 27 September, 2008, 12:58:52 pm
Mmmmmmm.... fresh figs baked with a strong blue cheese....  :P
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Wowbagger on 27 September, 2008, 01:02:33 pm
You know I have never had one. Don't know why as I love dried figs. I think I will have to buy some fresh ones now just as as to try them.

They aren't cheap. Waitrose had some Turkish ones at 49p each. They were so soft that one or two came off distinctly the worse for wear when sharing a saddlebag with 8 cans of Old Speckled Hen.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Jezza on 27 September, 2008, 06:20:02 pm
I've got a tree of them in my garden. In Southwold. Some of them are quite edible at certain times of the year. 
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Pete on 27 September, 2008, 09:19:00 pm
In our corner of France, they are regarded almost as a weed by local people, and tend to get grubbed up or ruthlessly pruned.  We don't have one as yet, but we rescued a sapling, a sucker from our neighbour's tree, which had sprung up in the hedge, and transplanted it to a prime spot in the lawn.  Last time we were there, it was still only a sapling.  Fingers crossed...
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: geraldc on 27 September, 2008, 09:23:13 pm
We have a fig tree in the garden. Only we're never sure how to ripen them. We've been told to put them in a brown paper bag in the airing cupboard, but they still stay green.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: andrew_s on 27 September, 2008, 09:28:46 pm
Some figs stay green all along, right to falling off the tree and rotting on the ground. Go by how soft they are.

I've never been particularly struck on supermarket fresh figs, but the ones off roadside trees in Spain or the south of France are wonderful. One of the great benefits of taking an autumn tour rather than a spring one.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: rafletcher on 03 October, 2008, 01:29:06 pm
I've never been particularly struck on supermarket fresh figs, but the ones off roadside trees in Spain or the south of France are wonderful. One of the great benefits of taking an autumn tour rather than a spring one.

Agreed, nofig I've ever eaten in the UK has been a patch on those I picked from the roadside one year in Italy.  The ones in Greece this august were nearly as good.

Similar thing with pears, again the best ever juiciest tastiest pear was in southern France where they have a chance properly to ripen.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Ian H on 03 October, 2008, 01:47:46 pm
Figs



The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.
Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom with your lips.

But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.

The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part; the fig-fruit:
The fissure, the yoni,
The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.

Involved,
Inturned,
The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled;
And but one orifice.

The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.
Symbols.

By D.H. Lawrence
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Cunobelin on 04 October, 2008, 09:08:34 am
I take great pleasure when I sink my teeth in and then run my tongue along the groove, savouring the musky juices before sucking gently on the vibrant pink flesh contained inside.

Don't you just love fresh figs? :D


Mmmmmmm.... fresh figs baked with a strong blue cheese....  :P


Sorry - that has just destroyed the wit and innuendo of the thread fo me!

I worked in an STD clinic for a couple of weeks as part of my Naval Medic training - to go further would provide too much information........ but I did come across a case that could be described similarly!
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Karen Sutton on 04 October, 2008, 11:02:23 pm
One of my best memories of staying with my Father in Spain (there aren't many as he lives in an ex pat ghetto on the Costa Blanca) is of Elizabeth, aged 9, sitting in a fig tree on some scrubland, eating the fruit straght off it.  She loves them and eats the skin as well.  It's just not the same buying them from the local greengrocer's.
Title: Re: Pleasures of the flesh
Post by: Really Ancien on 05 October, 2008, 01:14:20 pm
Sometimes available in Lidl, where they are a lot cheaper than 49p.

Damon.