The peach tree, and what I have learned from Twilight

Well, the week-end was interesting, couldn't have foreseen the popularity of the last post, thank you all for the comments, re-tweets, and emails, I know now that the Twilight saga is bigger than I had imagined! In fact I was really tempted to make a little experiment and call this post something like, 'Renesmee peach drink' in honour of Renesmee's peachy complexion (for those who don't know yet, Renesmee is the half human-half vampire daughter of Edward and Bella Cullen), just to see into how many other web spaces it would automatically come up! But this is another story.

I have a peach tree, grown from a discarded seed in the bush. Actually, there are two, but one is quite deep in the forest, while the other was struggling in the border of the open garden, battling for space. We don't cut native trees in the Waitakere ranges, this is a protected area, and I wouldn't do it anyway, so no chances of me clearing the space around the poor fruit tree! But it was close enough for me to train it to grow sideways out of the forest and into an open space, over the little Japanese garden I built. In fact it looks quite like a gigantic bonsai now, and in spring the flowers really suit the Japanese garden.

For many years I only had a handful of peaches, but finally this summer the tree was full!

The peaches are smaller than the ones I can find in shops, but they taste great, and they are mine!! What a satisfaction! Thank you lovely tree! A part from eating them by themselves I am making smoothies, like this one, with peaches, banana and apple juice from the local orchard.

And then fruit salads. I like peaches with raspberries, but the season is finished now, so I used the last strawberries and blueberries (marinated with a little sugar and lemon juice for a few hours), than I add peaches and vanilla meringues.

To make the meringues I used two tablespoons of caster sugar for each egg white, and a little vanilla paste (which is full of vanilla seeds). And then, why not, I topped everything with whipped cream :-) (come on, I don't do that that often!!!)

Yum!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©