Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Fresh

Sometimes I need to crunch on things, a bit like...a bunny.

I ate strange things today and the antidote was a chopped salad of radishes, fennel, Belgian endive, and an orange, with terrace mint. A variation of Cafe Gitane's salad of orange, black oil-cured olives and chile, which is wonderful. I was lazy and didn't, er, French the oranges (no, really, it's a technique: cutting between the segments and removing the membranes...I just sliced it. It makes a difference to the texture and, obviously, appearance - hence, overall feel-good factor. I think that's what good cooking is - maximum sensory impact). I feel funny eating oranges now, though. I still am a bit of a purist, and this late summer is the time of total harvest overload: peppers, tomatoes, aubergines, corn, beans, and peaches. But not oranges.

Hmm, so how do I justify my abuse of lemons and limes. Problem.

The peaches below are local at least to the Northeast, so not trucked in from Gardnowswhere, as Estorbo would say. They are sweet and succulent and perfumed and have the smallest hint of bitterness to the aftertaste, which I like. Contrast that to the straightline sweet of the piece of Kit-Kat I ate earlier today, and instantly regretted, and you are just plain puzzled. There's no better desert to me than fruit - maybe a taste I inherit from my father, who is a fruitbat (hey, we once ate fruitbat, together, but that's another story). He always eats fruit after dinner, peeling it carefully with his penknife. Who else has a penknife??? Or a handkerchief??? Or a Jag that keeps blowing up on freeways? Or a Rolex at the bottom of Zeekoeivlei?

But I digress. He also always eats the most bruised fruit first. When I was little I would eat the spinach first, which I hated, and save the roast potatoes for last. Another digression.

So I had two delicious peaches for dessert, and watched some more of the Original Avengers, c. '66. The girl gets to do just as much fighting as the boy and still looks fabulous.

13 comments:

  1. I wonder if Purdey ate bunnies too... ;-)))

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  2. You mean the original Avengers with ... ? who played The Girl? Name?? (Senior moment, you can deduce that I watched the series as a child! On Zambian TV!) She was my heroine.

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  3. Vince?

    ATE bunnies? Oh...NO! I meant, I, like a bunny, wanted to crunch things!!! Like vegetables. I didn't want to crunch bunny!!!!! Geez. OK, now I'm laughing. Thank you. Let me not even go there...

    Meesers of T and H: Dianna Rigg,the original Avengers - ring a bell??? :-))

    Joanna Lumley later...and I watched her when I was little.

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  4. Oh my goodness. I missed that. yes! Purdy was my hero. I was Purdy. I wanted to be her when I was big. I would have married her if she'd asked (so would Vince, right?) I mean, why wouldn't one? Those girls kicked butt! And had legs and hair and amazing wardrobes.

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  5. Excuse my intrusion in the love-fest for the Avengers... :-)

    But I wanted to lick the screen when I saw those peaches! Apparently that's something I've learned from Marie - she always wants to lick things.

    Now that could be taken out of context and it could sound bad. Oh whatever...so Vince, just a month to go, right?

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  6. I licked Chris' iPhone...

    Chris??!!?

    geez.

    I'm going to steal your phone. I really, really want it.

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  7. Yeah Chris, and then all hell breaks loose. ;-) I hear that the lampposts are threatened these days in Brooklyn. Make sure that Marie looks ahead of her in the street. I prefer running into trees, it's more green.

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  8. Dianna Rigg, very loud bell, thanks - I wanted to be her, she was so cool and classy

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  9. Not to worry Vince - today at lunch I made sure there were no pesky lampposts in the way.

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  10. May I interrupt the love fury for a sec? My dad also had a penknife, but his had a small pair of scissors attached. He used these to trim the hair in his nostrils while lying on his bed sans pyjama bottoms. People visited, but like a mourning Victorian he lay on his bed, crown jewels exposed.....

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  11. I have got to post pictures of peaches, write about The Avengers and Fathers, more often!

    Jay your dad was mal, ne?

    I like the penknife/pocketknife idea, I must say. My feeling on handkerchiefs is just...ick. Good for the environment, though...

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  12. Pedestrian hits lamppost. 2 dead. (Construction is a dangerous job) ;-)

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