Whats a fig newton10/5/2023 ![]() And with that, I think I’ll go harvest some figs so I can make a tart for dinner tonight. A brief story about one of my favorite fruits. Unfortunately with a 64% carbohydrate content diabetics should consume them sparingly. They’re also a good source of fiber containing about 14% of the Daily Value making them ideal for reducing blood pressure and controlling cholesterol. The average fig contains only 74 calories and 1% fat. They’re great for making jam and using in a large variety of savory dishes as well as numerous baked goods. In fact, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria account for about 62% of the world’s total.įigs are delicious whether fresh or dried. That top honor goes to Turkey with 320,000 tons grown annually. While California and Texas are the largest growers of figs in the United States, they’re responsible for only about 2% of the 1.27 million tons of world production. Other popular varieties include Brown Turkey, Calimyrna (also known as Smyrna), Kota, and White Adriatic. In fact Black Mission figs are what is used in Fig Newton cookies. In California the first crop is harvested from June to early July and because of the short season is less bountiful than the second crop which is harvested from mid-August through October.īlack Mission figs are, of course, one of the most popular varieties and are widely grown all over. Ripe figs are very perishable and therefore do not ship well. Purplish black on the outside, pink inside with a heady flavor, black figs, as with the kadota and the Adriatic figs, do not need wasp cultivation.Ĭalifornia became a commercial fig producer in 1900 and remains the leading fig producer in the United States with most of its annual 30 million pound crop being dried. Their fruit is know as Black Mission figs. Other well known varieties include the banyans and Peepul (sacred) figs.įigs came to America in 1769 when Father Junipero Serra first planted them in the Mission San Diego in California. There are about 800 species of the Ficus family with Ficus cariac, common fig, probably being the most popular and commercial important. Figs also hold symbolic positions not only in Christianity but in many other world religions including Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. In fact there are a number of scholars who believe that fruit to be a fig instead of an apple. It was fig leaves that Adam and Eve used to cover themselves after Adam partook of the forbidden fruit. The mention of figs and the fig tree appear numerous times in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In fact, a number of sub-fossil remnants dating back to 9,000 BC were found in the excavations of a Neolithic village a few miles north of Jericho, predating the domestication of wheat and barley. Dating back to ancient times the fig was believed to be one of the earliest plants cultivated by the human race. ![]() The fig, a member of the Moraceae (mulberry) family, is native to Western Asia and the Mediterranean. In fact I like them so much that my wife and I planted a Celeste Fig (looks like the one from my childhood) from which we harvest and enjoy its abundance every year. A decision I later regretted since figs have become one of my favorite fruits. So between the wasps and being told the fruit wasn’t tasty, I don’t recall ever trying one in the entire ten years we lived there. I remember asking my father about the bush and was told it was a wild fig and that those bulbous fruits growing on it every year were edible, but that he didn’t like figs. A bush that for some unknown reason my father refused to cut down. A bush that was also home to a huge nest of yellow jacket wasps. A bush that each spring was full of small pear-shaped yellow-green to reddish brown fruits. It also came with a small bush with large dark green leaves located in one corner of our back yard, just inside the property line from the vacant field behind us. Ours came with a blackland dirt yard, lots of Johnsongrass and other obnoxious prairie grasses, in both the front and backyards. Now at that time new homes didn’t come with sodded yards, shrubs, trees, or fences. When I was about eight years old our family moved to a home in a new North Texas suburban development.
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