My theory about buying crops like peaches out of season coming from California is that if they have a notable peachy fragrance then they'll taste good, like peaches should. My husband, who now does the food shopping, struggles to find varieties of fresh fruit for our weekly desserts and recently, against his better judgement, brought home peaches. I thought they tasted just fine, but he felt they tasted fairly like cardboard facsimiles of the real thing. So I thought, why not a peach pie? Then I amended the thought to a raspberry-peach pie, and that's what I baked yesterday morning.

While I was about it, I thought to bake a small batch of croissants, to tempt his appetite, somewhat depressed thanks to an unseasonal, and nasty cold that had followed, we think a bout of a nasty flu bug.

I've changed our dinnerware to the more cheerful flowered and brightly-patterned/coloured porcelain we use during the summer months now that we can fling the dining room windows open to let in the warm breezes in these pre-summer days of more carefree living. They reflect the glimpses we have of the garden outside the windows with colourful blooms blanketing the garden.

Lighter meals are also called for now that cooler weather has departed. Although we haven't given up on the traditional chicken soup and rice for Friday-night dinners. But instead of chicken done in the oven and accompanying potato pudding, we opt now for lighter fare, and Caesar salad with chicken and roasted cauliflower fits the bill for us now.

Today, my husband reciprocated in his way, proving that cooking and baking isn't monopolistically women's work, by setting about baking a bread for me. He doesn't eat the kind of breads that he produces for me, since I prefer whole-wheat or rye and lots of seeds and aromatic herbs and spices and he takes pleasure in producing them for me. And I hugely appreciate that. It's the only bread that I eat, actually.