One of those days

March 18, 2010

when memories fill your mind.

A friend asked me what it was. I think it’s good to write the answer here too.

It’s a “frutta martorana fruit”, a marzipan sweet that they shape in the form of different fruit and in this case they shaped it in the form of prickly pear fruit.
I love frutta martorana because it’s sweet and a nice typical Sicilian product that represent the creativity of my people and the colors of my land.

I love the prickly pear fruit because it’s a fruit that outside is full of thorns, but that if you peel paying attention you find one of the most sweet and tasty fruit in the world. I love this fruit also because all around here you can find prickly pear trees even in the space between big buildings… it’s kinda weird but amazing. And finally I love it because it reminds me of the big prickly pear tree that there was at my uncle’s country house that I used to contemplate with a kind of fear and respect till family adults used to came with the proper instrument to peek those fruits making the tree looking a little less scaring and much more captivating.

I love this particular prickly pear fruit made up with marzipan because it belongs to a group of “frutta martorana” pieces that in spring 2006 I’ve chosen in order to send those to my friend who lived in Iowa. There had been weight and “food and drug” permissions problem that made me unable to send me the present.
A couple of weeks later my father found the way to send marzipan sweets but he bought new ones (without me) because we wanted to send to my friend fresh products. My friend was glad anyway, of course, but… last night I realized that this, among those few other marzipan fruits I’ve chosen, it’s the only “material” thing that I have that can recall me of him… I wish I had allowed him to send me an a cap with written on Iowa or something related to his state.