A definition of Joy

This. Just this. If you asked me how to define joy I would profer you seven kilograms of ripe, slightly overripe apricots.

Especially in a season where everyone I know lost their entire crop in the hail storms of last month.

So can you imagine my amazement when I went up to the market on Thursday to see Stephane with his usual crates of the fabulous fruit?

Everyone was lined up and shoving in that slightly disgraceful way in the face of a dwindling stock of fruit. By a miracle his orchard down at Beauchastel was spared the sweeping disaster zone of hail that wiped out all our fruit.

The only fun thing was that the fruit wouldn’t last. Even as I was taking the tray to the car I swear there was a trailing cloud of wasps just itching to get into the juice and gorge on the flesh.

Hah. I beat them to it.

I stewed the lot. Just lightly with a splash of homemade cordial as the sweetener. They didn’t need much. I had a small bottle of last year’s elderflower syrup in the pantry and that went in.

Half an hour later I was shoving the batches into Tupperware and cramming them into the deep freeze.

I’m too busy to attend right now. So they can be defrosted when I come up with a plan.

And those leftover ones. Of course they were supposed to be made into a tart. But time. Time. Who has time? Let alone lighting an oven in this blasting heat.

So I made use of those apricots by standing over the sink and gorging the lot.

Utter bliss.