Related Posts Market share: gluten-free baking a piece of cake In August, if you live in Villeray or Parc-Ex (or many other neighborhoods around Montreal), you can go onto your balcony and pick the grapes, crab apples and plums that earlier generations of Greek and Portuguese families planted, long before the sea change of gentrification swept through their neighbourhoods. But if you don't have access to backyard fruit, worry not: The markets are flush with Quebec-grown plums, and unlike other summer fruits, they're cheap as hell. They are also a pretty fruit, so plump and purple. I am always drawn to them, but don't actually enjoy eating them as much as I think I should. Yesterday, however, remembering a time when I made a thyme-scented plum sorbet with honey, I grabbed a basket, thinking I would do the same. But as the weather is starting to cool, and turning on the oven does not seem like the worst idea on earth, I decided instead to make a cake. When traveling through the southern U.S. this summer, I met a number of people who were obsessed with CrossFit , a health and lifestyle regime that "forges elite fitness" through old-school calisthenics ("just finish your burpees, and then we'll head out and toss around the ol' medicine ball") and an even older approach to eating and nutrition: the Paleo diet , in which people try to emulate a caveman's diet. The protagonists in Haruki Murakami novels are always doing calisthenics in their