I’ve been busy with personal stuff this week, so not much cooking going on. Except for last night when I taught the first of my 3-class series at Les Gourmettes. Today I’m going to catch you up on what’s been going on around my house and give you a valuable tip for cutting fig leaves and branches.

I have four fig trees in my backyard, which is three too many for my needs, but I’m going with the flow. I use the figs, of course, but I also put the fig leaves to good use on the Harmony Boards. They are best used under very soft cheeses and also when mixed in with other greens for the base of our Crudités and Frudités Boards, as seen above. All of the leaves on the board above are from my yard. We’ll talk more about the garden in a moment. First I want to tell you about the issue I was having with the fig leaves.

When fig leaves or branches are cut, they immediately begin to wilt, even when quickly put into water. I don’t know if this is caused by the milky fluid they put out when they are cut or exactly what it is that causes the wilting, but it’s annoying.

I discovered that if the stem gets a fresh cut under cold running water or is cut while immersed in water, the leaves are quickly revived. They will look great for days. Amazingly, the leaves will even stay unwilted when pulled out of the water several minutes later when I use them for a board.

When I was getting ready to post these photos I was thinking, “why should my readers believe that the wilted photo was taken first and the revived photo of fresh-looking leaves taken after?”

Why, indeed?!? To prove that this is the case, here are the same photos with their timestamps. The photo above was taken at 8:06 AM and the photo below was taken at 8:40 AM. See, wilted and then refreshed after being recut under cold water. Like Magic!

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