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!

WINDOW

 I last featured  THIS LOCATION  on February 2nd. You can see the same 'sheets' hanging now as curtains inside this ground-floor apa...