On a narrow, stair-stepped passage in the “centro storico” – historic district – of Taormina, there was a small shop that sets up fruits and vegetables outside. The lemons pulled me, looking like seventeenth-century Old Masters’ paintings. Some fruit was cut and drying at the edges, more thick-of-skin than there was flesh. Some was left corpulent and uncut.
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Maureen, I remember the still life paintings from your earlier trip. If I get back to painting watercolors after moving, I’d love to base a painting on these lemon pictures. But tell, me, are they all lemons? Are those wrinkly fruit with thick skins perhaps actually citrons or maybe bergamots?
I don’t know if they’re all lemons. Some of them had more skin than fruit flesh. They may, indeed, be citrons and bergamots… I just zoomed in on one of my images. It says “Limoni Cedrati, Sicilia”, but that’s only for some of the fruit. The rest of it doesn’t have labels. (I may do a LARGE digital print of the lemons for my kitchen… like, 3′ x 2′!)
Maureen, “limoni cedrati” are citrons. We had one outside our back stairs when I lived in Berkeley. I had no idea what it was at the time. I remember the thick, thick peel and the odd-tasting fruit. The blood oranges in the photos have me salivating.
Well, there ya go! I didn’t even question the variation in the lemons. And the blood oranges, “Tarocco“, are fabulous. Yum, in fresh squeezed orange juice! “Una spremuta“. At the street market the other day, I didn’t see any yet and forget what time of year they’re available. (I’ll have to check my blog posts and see when I wrote about them last year.)
It was March 14, 2010 that I wrote about the blood oranges. I guess I missed them!
What to do with citrons, a link sent by a friend: http://www.notderbypie.com/etrog-marmalade/