NECTARINES VERSUS PEACHES

You learn something new every day.  Or at least I do.  Your COVID correspondent cannot remain serious on COVID the whole time when there's the serious topic of losing some serious weight put on both before and during the pandemic.

One of the welcome side effects of my 66C diet is that I am enjoying my food more, especially when it is a matter of flavour.

I have discovered the magic of nectarines as a snack, only typically 2C each:

• Ripe, when they are flavoursome, sweet and juicy
• Semi-ripe, when they crunch in exchange for some of the juice
• Either way, they go better with coffee than apples

As a kid there was a peach tree in the garden, but it never produced much fruit. A couple of days ago I bought two different types of peaches from two different countries:

• Semi-ripe they were rather bland
• Ripe they are not much better, and have rather thick 'furry' skins

Turns out that nectarines and peaches are very closely related, and can be used interchangeably in cooking.

As always there are different varieties.  But unless these two batches of 'representative' peaches show improvement, it's nectarines for me!