Too many figs and lemons?

What to do when your street is overflowing with figs and lemons?  Try canning fig jam.

Easy ingredients: Figs, lemon zest and juice, and sugar.  You can jazz it up with spices/herbs like cinnamon, ginger, and rosemary.  I keep the skins on and seeds in and quickly blast it with the hand blender at the end before canning.  Great with pork.

Recipes abound online or use Tessa Kiros' version in Twelve on page 279.  It's slotted for September but with Southern California weather, early August is yielding good figs.

Limoncino or Limoncello?

We brought a bottle of the lemon liquor back from Liguria this trip.  I had been calling it Limoncello but today I noticed the bottle said Limoncino.  After half-hearted googling, it seems in the north they call it Limoncino, particularly around the Cinque Terre, and in the south Limoncello.  Yet another reason to get to the Amalfi Coast someday!  Then I ran across a producer in Ventura County.