Monday, August 4, 2008

Back to Belgrade with plums!

It's plum season on the outdoor markets here now. I photographed these beauties yesterday when we took a little excursion outside of town. (Yes, I picked some.....) In Serbian plums are called šlive (SCHLEE-vay) and in addition to eating them fresh, city women make plum jam, plum dumplings, and plum pies out of them. Village women make the same, while their husbands make something they prefer: šlivovica (SCHLEE-vo-veet-sa), a brandy whose alcohol content varies between 25 and 70%. It's interesting that the Serbian word for 'plum' is related to the Latin līvidus, or “bluish, bruise-colored,” from which we get livid, a word synonomous with our black-and-blue when used to describe the discoloration caused by a bruise. Pretty color anyway!

FLOWERS IN HER HAIR

 This senior lady in the bus still looks good with 'flowers in her hair'. She sets her own style with the wild prints on her skirt a...