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.