Growing up, dried fruits were always a background food, something on the table that was never really meant to be eaten, unless you were a senior citizen. Their untouchable status might have had something to do with their reputation as an antidote for the withering effects of all that matzo on one’s gastrointestinal system. No matter how graciously they were laid out on how elegant a platter, they were often still there, all alone on a plate, long, long after the afikomen had been found. Sometimes when cleaning out the pantry we would discover something resembling a deceased mutant rodent, last year’s leftover dried fruits. Then, the California Dancing Raisins arrived, and dried fruit burst into my lifestyle as a hip purveyor of my emergent adult identity – an organic vegetarian who eschewed cultural materialism.

While the kids in the eco-house at college had always seemed to munch incessantly on nuts, raisins and apricots during class, meetings, and inconceivably, while parking their bicycles in front of the student center, we first accepted dried fruit as a hiking and camping food. Then, as friends came back from long stints in Israel, they introduced us to great recipes that used died fruits in couscous, and somewhere along the way everyone started observing Tu Bishvat. We had large dinner parties with giant platters of exotic dried fruits and nuts.

Later, in Italy, where we searched my ancestors, we learned to consume dried fruits – especially apricots, figs and pears – with goat cheese or pecorino. It turns out that my great-grandfather’s brother, Nicolo DiFluri, grew the figs and apricots in Castinatelli that supplied local dried fruit exporters. That old town was carved into the side of a low mountain. Rock-paved roads wove perilously uphill in between stone houses. Layers of weather swathed the village buildings in grey and brown hues with blue and green overtones. Vibrant red and yellow floral arrangements emerged from every windowsill. My great-great aunt, Angelina, then over 100 years old, still kept small fruit trees outside her home, perched on a slope where the sun regularly relaxed its long rays. She still laid out pitted fruits on granite tables to dry in the sun, along with the tomatoes from her garden. Everyday she sipped a little red wine in the afternoon, walked up the narrow path to her terraced gardens, and let the sun infuse her skin with warm olive tones. Back then, as young adults, Israel and Italy wrapped geography, might, food and soul into one giant schechianu. Dried fruit metaphorized all that – land, tree, fruit, sunlight and something to eat.

Nowadays, dried fruit has now become a popular healthy snack even for kids. Yet, like everything else it has the mixed blessings of commercialization. Our kids know dried fruit as something that comes in a bag, or a clear plastic container – and sometimes with sweetener, and often with sulfites to preserve texture and color. They no longer look so dark and misshapen and so kids like them more. Children today easily snack on dried apples, cranberries, raspberries and even pineapple and mango, while we parents constantly monitor the ingredients, always mindful of allergic reactions to nuts and sulfites, and refined sugar content. They also slather their skin with sun block and wear hats and sunglasses when spending significant time outside. Odd that natural elements that were once so simple, pure and healthy could become so hazardous.

Every year, at Pesach, we find some organic, naturally dried fruits and graciously lay out a spread on an elegant platter – figs, prunes, dates, apricots, and raisins, and sometimes berries – which our kids selectively munch when not distracted by more tempting treats.  When it is time to find the freedom of their own lives, will they remember the quiet presence of these eccentric food items upon their table? Will dried fruit one day unobtrusively accompany their dreams for the future, just as they did ours? From the land of wheat and barley, pomegranates, vines, and figs to kitchen tables across the generations, history has been made in the quotidian observance of the raisin, the fig, the date, the prune and the apricot, connected, as they are, so to speak, through the grapevine.