I’ll say it this way, as simply as I can. 'Cuz that's how Lou Grant once said it.

“I cherish you people”.

I started this blog on November 21, 2008. Before that I never knowingly read a blog before. I had an "intellectual understanding" about what a blog was. But I remember thinking how could anyone really care that much about another person’s yammering. I remember thinking “how can I ever know if you have any idea what you are talking about?”

Well, I have done a one-eighty in these past 5 months. I now look to bloggers for inspiration! I look forward to reading your yammerings.

One of these inspirational moments came from an Award Winning Irish Food Blogger named The Daily Spud. She recently posted a marvelously simple rhubarb compote/stewed rhubarb recipe. Her joy and love for this recipe came shining through.

I made some lame comment about having never eaten rhubarb but having an "intellectual understanding” of what rhubarb was. I am the worst commenter. I actually am a better lurker. But still, sometimes you gotta support the bloggers you love.

So these past few weeks I have had rhubarb in the back of my mind. I am not the kind of person who is happy having an “intellectual understanding” of food. I am surprised she still speaks to me.

There is only one way to reconcile the heavy burden I carry over my rhubarb remarks and the high standards to which I try to hold SippitySup.

Gertrude Stein’s (arguably) most famous quote is "a rose is a rose is a rose". It makes you wonder, had she ever met a quince?

I think Shakespeare’s Juliet was closer to the truth when she said, “…a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Quince can be marvelously sweet smelling.

If you are casually acquainted with the fruit, quince may seem more like an apple or a pear. And in fact it is a “pome” fruit just like an apple or pear. Pome fruits are most easily described at a fruit with a “core” or “endocarp”. Apples and pears have cores, so do cotoneaster, hawthorn, loquat, medlar, Pyracantha, quince, rowan, and whitebeam.

Though quince shares other botanical traits with the rest of the pome fruits, the quince’s culinary traits are quite different. In fact it’s culinary traits line up more with the rose (had you not considered rose culinary?).