Kia ora and hello.
Today is Wednesday here and is the day of the week that I would like to talk about food and cooking. However, my week has not gone to plan and I don't have a variety of photos prepared of the meals we had in the house over the week. The fruit bowl, at least, is full. So I have taken some photos of the fruit and have decided to use them as my talking point.
Here is the whole bowl. Full over the brim. Pear, nectarine, kiwifruit, peach, banana and mango. And there are some tomatoes hiding in there too. The bowl is sitting on our oak table, and you can see our vintage placemats too. The bowl is a large green ceramic piece and it sits on a woven mat.
I took the above photo to highlight the mango. It's a bit under-ripe. Hopefully the bananas will hurry it along. I'll talk more about that after the photos. The mango doesn't grow well here, so this fruit is imported.
The peaches are golden queen and from New Zealand. I ate one, and sadly, they're a bit disappointing. A little floury. We have a tree in the backyard that fruits in small peaches of this kind and to be honest I prefer those.
Kiwifruit with yellow/gold flesh. They're much nicer in my opinion than the green ones. Grown also locally here in New Zealand. There are kiwifruit with rose-coloured flesh too. Those are nice, but expensive as they export well.
Nectarines which are also local, but which are a bit hard like the mango. In with the bananas to try to bring them up to full readiness.
Here are the tomatoes that have been in the bowl for a while. Technically they're fruit too. We prefer to keep them in the fruit bowl and not in the fridge so they stay juicy.
I forgot to take a close up of the pears, but they're maybe the nicest fruit in the whole bowl. Grown in New Zealand also. I prefer a pear to an apple, myself.
Before I finish, for anyone who thinks my choice of post topic is a bit weird or boring, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the history of still life and the bowl of fruit.
A web search tells me that the fashion was at its height during the Dutch Golden Age when there were lots of still life paintings featuring overflowing fruit bowls. They symbolized wealth and abundance but also decay.
While my quick phone photos aren't aiming for high art, there's still a connection to that tradition of finding beauty and meaning in the simple arrangement of everyday objects on a table. The composition of the colourful fruit, the texture of the bowl, and the setting all contribute.
And also for anyone who doesn't know about the bananas and their ability to ripen other fruit, it's quite a neat bit of nature's chemistry. Bananas, especially as they ripen themselves, produce a significant amount of ethylene gas.
Ethylene is a natural plant hormone that triggers the ripening process in many fruits. That's why we placed the under-ripe fruits like the mango and nectarines close to the bananas in the bowl.
And I forgot all about the delicious mandarins that are chilling in the fridge.
Next week's food post will contain some meals we have eaten, instead of the fruit bowl. But I might do some more ingredient-based posts down the track. I hope you enjoyed the read.
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