take one peach (it doesn’t have to be one that cost more than a euro and was flown from australia (note to self, don’t just pick the peaches up and put then in your basket, look at the price also)
take one passion fruit (passion fruit cost less than the peach)
slice the peach in an arc cutting into the stone
drop slice into bowl
repeat the whole way around the peach until all you are left with is the stone
slice the passionfruit in half (over the bowl of peaches, juice inside will be wasted otherwise)
wonder at the small quantity of seeds
admire the pretty colours in the bowl
toss the peach slices so that the passionfruit seeds become dispersed
eat. eat with attention focused solely on the peach and passion fruit treat.

if there is a sorbet or an icecream or infact, a desert of any fruity description that tastes better than this, i have yet to find it.

this dessery/snack/ i want something sweet is best enjoyed when it has been at least a week since you last ate sugar (man made, added ingredient type of sugar) of any sort.

as an aside, what the hell were this weeks apprentices thinking? (the losing team) 500 pizzas. were they insane? the project manager definitely was insane. she didn’t say “that’s a crazy number!”. she deserved to be fired. as for the man who bought 100 chickens to go on 500 pizzas. note to that person. not everyone in the world likes chicken on pizza. pizza is for pepperoni, anchovies, peppers etc. also, where was your brain? 100 chickens for 500 pizzas? hello?

SK and I will be moving to our new home, sometime within the next month (we hope). Whilst we have pretty much every thing we need (including a gaggia for espresso).

We do not have is a kettle. For many reasons. Mainly, because we couldn’t agree on one we both liked.

Therein lies the conundrum. Our new kitchen, is, shall we say, counter top challenged. There is going to be very little space for a kettle, a toaster and the coffee machine. Especially, if we are going to also require a food preparation area. One obvious solution to this problem, is, to use a stove top kettle.

That means wrestling with the green matters of conscience. A stove top kettle is B-A-D. It uses a lot more electricity to boil water than say, an electric kettle.

But, I’ll counter the argument with my own points in favour of it:

i) you can still boil only the amount of water you require
ii) does it have as much environmental impact as say, a four wheel drive, three litre monster, increasingly seen on Irish roads
iii) does it have as much environmental impact as not ever turning off your television, and leaving it only on standby (a television on standby still requires 20% of the electricity it uses when it is turned on)
iv) does it have as much environmental impact as not switching from two cars to one car
v) does it have as much environmental impact as leaving radiators on in rooms we never use

By my reckoning, if we don’t ever drive a three litre four wheel drive, if we turn the television off, if we don’t leave lights on, if we turn off the rads in the rooms we don’t use, we will be reducing our carbon footprint enough to allow for a twice daily use of a stove top kettle.

Not to mention the fact that I find them, in someway more aesthetically pleasing. It strikes me as rather odd that in the current craze for all things “retro”, kettles are still being churned out to look as modern as possible.