Figs

Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks about figs, one of my favorite fruits, along with strawberries. My childhood memories take me to my grandmother’s house where she had a large fig tree, and my job in the summer months was to climbs its branches and clip as many figs as possible. I would fill buckets of large, juicy figs, while a large portion of them would end up in my stomach. Unfortunately that tree is no more, and sadly enough some unknown bug had destroyed most fig trees in Malta, and botanists just cannot revive them or bring them back to the way they were before. There's something magical about eating a fresh fig. Figs also connect you to the history of humanity. After all, how many other foods can say they've been written about in the Bible, eaten by Greek Olympians and talked about in ancient mythology? Yes, there's something magical about figs, but don't let that intimidate you. There's a reason why people have been eating figs since the Neolithic period—they're easy, delicious and nourishing. Figs are believed to have originated in Western Asia. They arrived in the Mediterranean region, and consequently the rest of the world, through human migration. Archaeological evidence traces figs back to at least 5000 B.C. Some scholars believe that figs were one of the first plants to be domesticated by humans. Figs are available during the summer to early fall depending on the variety. There are 5 different types of figs: Black Mission Figs, Kadota Figs, Brown Turkey Figs, Calimyrna Figs and Adriatic Figs. Figs grow in climates that are warm and dry like in the Mediterranean region – so Malta is ideal to cultivate them and hopefully revive their premature destruction by pesty bugs. In the U.S., the majority of figs are grown in California.