The Scottish side of my family comes from my father's side, through my great grandmother.

My great grandmother on my mother's side came from Sicily.

She was born in a town named Partanna.

Making fig cookies this time of the year is a tradition with many Italian families. Most fig cookies are rolled into logs, cut into pieces resembling a slightly mooshed cylinder, vent slits are cut into the cookie, and some families add icing. (A good friend's family makes the most delicious cookies in this style that I've ever had.)

There was apparently a cloistered nunnery near the town where my great grandmother lived until coming to America when she was young. Being cloistered nuns, they had a lot of time on their hands, and they made a different style of fig cookie and shared it with people nearby. They looked around the island and represented the things they saw in the cookies.

The fig cookies my friend's family makes are sweeter than what our family makes. From what I gathered through my great grandmother's cooking, cloves were used where she grew up (there are cloves in these cookies, she put cloves in her red sauce, and there were hints of cloves in other things she made). There is also a bit of orange rind that comes out through the figs, cloves, and other spices. While our family's cookies aren't as sweet as my friends' family's cookies, it's always fun to eat them side by side, noticing the differences.

I wish everybody reading this could taste the cookies we make,and the cookies my friend's family makes side by side. But since I can't share that, I figured I'd at least share a photo of what consumed our weekend:



Thanks for looking,

Christopher