Quince jelly, cream cheese rolls ボケのジェリーとチーズのレバノンボローニャロールアップ

My wife found "Quince" jelly at Whole Foods and it evoked childhood memories, so she had to buy it. It was one of her Father's favorite treats. His parents would buy some on their annual winter trip to Florida and send it to him (it wasn't available in rural PA). It was stashed in a carefully guarded cache and distributed on only the most special of occasions.

When I was a kid in Japan, our neighbor had a quince tree. The Japanese name for quince is "Boke" ぼけ. I am not sure the origin of the name and may be totally unrelated but "boke" in Japanese may mean to become "senile" or "dumb".  I do remember the quince tree had nice flowers and good looking pear-like fruit but it was totally inedible. I have never seen quince jam or jelly in Japan but I never looked for it. In any case, after tasting the quince jelly, this is what my wife came up with as a snack to go with our red wine.

Any ham or cheese will probably work but she used sweet Lebanon Bologna*, and cream cheese with quince jelly for this roll up. Sweet Lebanon Bologna has a nice smokey flavor with spices which went well with the combination of cream cheese (neutral taste) and sweet with slight sourness from the quince jelly. It went perfectly with our Cab.

*Lebanon Bologna is nothing to do with the country "Lebanon" but rather Lebanon County in Pennsylvania. The company called "Seltzer" has been making this for many years. My wife grew up eating  this. So, when she found that it was available in our grocery store, we have to stock it at all times. Cream cheese is also from Philadelphia. So, this is sort of paying hommage to her childhood or more aptly "child-food".