On 29 Oct 07, at 11:56, Jim McKenney wrote: > As an aside, how many of you saw the recent article in the food > section of one of the major newspapers in which a sort of rubbery > ice cream had been developed based on old concoctions made with > salep. Evidently the salep trade continues to this day in Turkey. Also in North America, or at least in Canada. Around here, food stores specializing in Middle Eastern delicacies often have salap for sale. There are several different brands and most or all seem to be only partly pure salap, the rest being a standard culinary starch. Careful reading of the ingredient lists suggests some contain a higher proportion of salap than others. Cooked up per directions with milk, sugar, and flavorings, these products make something very close to a cornstarch pudding, but with a distinctively gooey, stringy texture. They are usually fairly sweet and flavored with rose water or orange blossom water. There is nothing in their flavor that I can attribute to the salap they contain. Salap is famous as an invalid food, so those of you looking forward to a winter of recuperation from the hard summer work of gardening may wish to consider adding it to your diet of restoratives. Jim McKenney also mentioned tulips as foodstuffs, but this surprised me. The only mentions I've seen to eating tulip bulbs refer to the Dutch famine during WWII under the Nazi occupation. Do you have a reference to historical eating of tulip bulbs, Jim? The culinary flower bulb par excellence (aside from allium) is the crocus. IIRC, Brian Mathew mentions seeing long strings of crocus corms sold in Syria or Turkey, braided like garlic. Myself, I'm looking for real honest-to-God mastic from the island of Cos. I can get mastic flavored chewing gum, but the retrogrouch in me wants the 100% Real Thing. This is an off-topic paragraph. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island