Millions of peaches...

...peaches for me. Over the years I've come to the realisation that I just don't eat fruit. Well, not very often, anyway. From this realisation I reached the conclusion that I just prefer rubbish. Or, at least, home baked yummies like bikkies and cake. Then a dawning realisation came upon me. It is true, I do love to bake and will happily sit down of an afternoon (or morning, mid morning, early evening or sometimes late evening) to a steamy cup of tea and a wedge of whatever is lurking in my golden, sparkling, anodized aluminium cake tin. It is, however, not automatically true that baked goods are my preference over fruit. They are my preference over underwhelming and fairly ordinary fruit, which seems so very common these days.
Piece by glorious piece of superlative fruit has awakened my senses to what we should expect and probably once had, in our fruit. One of my Gran's home grown nectarines is just not enough. They are magnificent, fragrant and juicy. Ditto to her blood plums, true to their name dripping horrifically red juices down my arm as I eat. And when she gets to that point where her system starts to go in to stone fruit overload (yes, we all know what I'm getting at) I happily lug bag after heavy bag home.
Maybe it's this grounding in the appreciation of top rate fruit from a young age that's made me such a critic. Now, when I gather up a few bags of beautiful looking pieces with the purest of healthy eating intention, I  very often end up disappointed
Just a week or so ago, at the height of stone fruit season, I allowed my eyes and imagination to wander across an ethereal looking photo and accompanying recipe in one of my expensive and adored cook books. So off I toddle to the fresh food people to purchase eight perfect peaches. Upon returning home they are lovingly lowered into a gently simmering pot of vanilla scented sugar syrup where they poach innocently for the stipulated ten to fifteen minutes. Sounds nice, yes? No less than half an hour later, with some highly eager and slightly desperate for their sweets kids, I extract the still beautiful looking peaches. With my chef standard asbestos hands I delicately peel them, cursing only mildly beneath my breath as I battle with hot, sticky bits of furry peach leather. Then into my sweetest floral vintage dessert bowls go four beautiful, glistening and fragrant cricket balls, accompanied by a creamy dollop of thick Greek yoghurt. No amount of cooking would ever have seen these specimens develop in to something even vaguely edible. No wonder we are a nation of junk food inhaling, fatty boombahs when one of our primary food suppliers sells fruit better suited to playing ball sports with than eating.
Shortly after the peach incident I read an article put out by these same fresh food people singing the praises of the farmers who grow the stone fruit for them (and I feel for these farmers, the demands must be huge). It explained one of the dilemmas of growing stone fruit was not being able to please everyone. Apparently there a two camps when it comes to eating peaches. Those who like them juicy, oozy and fragrant and those who like them crisp and crunchy. Crunchy?! I think these latter folk are the same people who create the demand for those mealy, brown under the skin apples they prepare painstakingly in a cool store. Have you ever eaten one of those? I won't get started on cool stores, but morgue and seventy five year old apples immediately come to mind.
Just to tie off my poor fruit and unhealthy eating gripe, the other main food supplier recently ran an ad in the paper. On one side it advertised cantaloupe as "healthy and refreshing" for the bargain price of $2.78 each. On the facing page, Tim Tams $1.52.  These places do convenience really well and I shop in both regularly for that very reason. Many people shop only in these places and we wonder why parents willingly feed their families crap. It's not just cheaper, but compared to what they offer as fresh produce, it also tastes better. With such a huge influence on society, a sniff of social responsibility would be nice, wouldn't it?
So, when my kids turn up their button noses at average fruit, I won't assume it's because they don't like fruit, I'll assume it's because they don't like bad fruit. Then I'll hastily get myself to our local Farmer's Market or Wilson's Fruit and Veg and spend a bit more on good fruit we'll all eat. I'll also eagerly anticipate our weekly home delivered, organic $25 vegie box. It comes from a local farm run by Greg and Marg May and contains far more than we'd get in the shops for the money and is like a big box of pot luck each week because we never know what will be inside. Perfect.

These blogs seem to be taking on a life of their own. I like that I can open a window into the head from which buntyandsars comes. I like too that I can update you on the buntyandsars bus and the stops it's been making lately.
I'm just starting to slowly get moving again and I'm looking forward to my husband going back to work because routine makes a big difference to the way I operate. It allows me to schedule in big chunks of focused, creative time. With kidlets, this time is precious and if you've got some offspring running around under your feet you'll know how difficult it can be to get  anything done!
The sign in the picture is another reminder of what's important to my creative drive. Having my own space, although small, is crucial. Not only can I have a few things on the go, I can also leave them there without fear of unsupervised and unwanted collaboration in the form of kiddie scissor collage and crayon overlays. When I head in to my space I feel a sense of calm come over me. It is my place and my place alone. Add a little Stubbsy on 774 to the mix and I'm a happily productive lady.
In this happy place I've recently started developing some new cardboard stands to display my colouring book range. They will be whizz bang and hopefully make everything look more slick and professional. Paper Percy has also made a reappearance in my developmental drawings, so he shouldn't be far out of your hands. Last but not least I've ordered a new high quality replacement for my sign. It will look exactly the same but on sturdier stuff, which will withstand rain and clumsiness on my part.
Now that I've managed to hammer out a Monday night blog, I will sign off with the promise of getting back to some regular buntyandsars-ing. So until Monday next week(maybe!), ta, ta!