Remember when your children, (or you) played the Hot-Warm-Cold game?
Someone would hide an object, then another person would try and find the object. The one looking for the “thing” would know if he was getting close when he was told, “You’re getting warmer,” and if he was really close, “You’re on fire” and if the object was right under his nose, “You’re burning up!”
Conversely, if he was going in the wrong direction, he’d be told, “You’re getting colder” and if he wasn’t even in the same room, “You’re freezing.”
It’s interesting to me that children are much the same throughout the world, because I’ve witnessed this game being played with similar exuberance and excitement, alongside Italian ragazzi (children) in Ostuni, Italy.
(The comparable expressions in Italian would be, fuochino, fuocherello and fuoco, respectively and acqua, acquetta).
After the game, we went for a walk, stopping at a fruit stand for cherries and grapes. The boys competed in “who can spit the cherry pits the farthest, the girls ate their grapes and giggled (different country, same behavior).
Okay, as far as this recipe is concerned, it is cold and icy, but it is not an Italian granita (like lemon granita). Keep frozen grapes in your freezer and you can make this icy treat (less than two minutes) for all those cherry-pit-spitting boys and giggly-girls in the neighborhood.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups red seedless grapes, frozen
- 2-3 teaspoons honey
- In a food processor, add the grapes and two teaspoons of the honey, pulse until the grapes are finely chopped.
- Taste for sweetness, add the other teaspoon of honey if necessary and process mixture until (almost) smooth.
- Serve immediately with a spoon-straw (spoon to eat, straw to slurp as it melts).
