Just Peachy

I am filled with admiration for our mum who always saw to it that we were all ready for a family trip to church every Sunday morning, and still managed to get a full roast dinner on the table afterwards. And I'm sure we didn't have to wait until the middle of the afternoon for it. It's true I live a bit further away from church than we did then, but I'm lucky if my dinner reaches the table by tea-time! One of the things that made Sunday dinner special was that we always had pudding! I admit I still have a sweet tooth and enjoy a pudding though I do have to be a bit careful these days because of the diabetes. Usually our pudding back then was fruit from the garden that was bottled and stored on shelves under the stairs, but occasionally, when the bottles ran out, we would have tinned peaches and custard. The name 'cling peaches' used to facinate me, and I wondered what they clung to. Now I know that they are just a different type of peach and out here they grow abundantly. They are almost giving them away in the market. As well as all the usual fruit stalls selling them, every street corner has someone with crates of them and this week the going rate was €1 for 1 kg. I told a lady I'd have two kilos so she hung a plastic carrier on a spring balance and weighed me out a very generous 2 kg and then added three or four more fruit and said 'un regalo' (a gift), so I have a lot of peaches now. They are not like any we buy in UK. They have a firm bright orange flesh which is lovely as long as they are really ripe. I select a few of the ripest to go in the fruit bowl and gently poach the rest. Once cooked they are exactly like the tinned 'cling peaches' that we are all familiar with. I chop some of mine to eat with yoghurt for breakfast, last week they made a crumble and this week they made a lovely trifle, and any that are left I purree to make a sauce for ice-cream. And the ones still sitting on the table make the kitchen smell lovely. So everything is just peachy right now!