I was cutting up glorious raw figs for my salad last week and I became so inspired by them that I began to believe that maybe I needed to travel to Greece! A fig adventure, and it would be a tax write off. I looked up ‘Greece’ on the web. This year, the fig crop is delayed a week or so. Maybe I could make it. I found a ferry to Turkey. Oh my god, how perfect! I could eat fresh figs in Turkey, in the market in Istanbul. The dream got deeper. I would maybe have to retire in Greece, and maybe friends would want to join me. It seemed so affordable.
That’s how passionate you can get about life and eating raw figs this time of year. When you cut them open they look like passion flowers inside. You can’t imagine anything more beautiful, more elegant, superb, closer to God. Soft, sweet, almost to the point of jam.
Its not certain exactly when the fig came to Greece, it was so long ago. That’s when mythology steps in. Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, is believed to have created the fig tree. Figs are an important part of the basic diet of Greeks and, like the olive, are a symbol of Peace.
Fresh, mouth watering, plucked from one of the thousands of trees that grow throughout the Greek country side. How good can eating raw get?
Health wise, it gets even better. As one of the most alkaline foods on planet earth, it makes them a powerful remedy against gout and arthritis because of the fruits ability to dissolve uric acid salts in the blood. A member of the mulberry tree, figs are a great source of potassium and gentle fiber that nourishes and tones the intestines.
The best news is raw figs contain natural Vitamin B17, also known as laetrile, thought to have a positive effect on all cancers and tumors. Fig fruit contains the phytochemical benzaldehyde, which Japanese scientists were able to identify as an active ingredient when extracting the organic juice. This was found to have cancer-fighting capabilities. Wow, I’m thinking, booking a trip to Greece for the figs is worth the price of the ticket alone. That’s what eating raw figs can do to you. So if you dare to dream and indulge in great health join me in this falls raw fig harvest.