Feast your eyes

At first glance, Kathleen Ryan’s giant fruit sculptures are anything but peachy. They’re decaying and covered in mould. Then you get closer and they become something entirely different. Rather than rot and fungus, they’re covered in crystals, gemstones, and shells. Their unappetising surface adornment is built up to look almost industrial, quite like a scientific metropolis. Ryan creates something that is both real and otherworldly – there’s a juxtaposition between nature and the modern world and she plays with scale in a way that makes us really look twice at her creations. Her transformations allow us to question our ideals about nature and beauty. It’s so much more than just a peach.

Kathleen Ryan has a brand new exhibition – Red Rose – at the Josh Lilley gallery in London. It’s showing until 5th August.

Cherry picked

When the real world proves too exhausting, we whizz off to our imaginary holiday home in Parisian artist Nathalie Lété’s wonderland of whimsy for a bit of R&R. There are lots of cats there, though they don’t bother the birds, who devour the fruit on the cherry vase-tree in the garden, but kindly leave us all the ones round the back so we can eat approximately 350 in a very hot bath while staring at a wall. Great place, you should visit. We’ll save you some cherries.

Four of your five a day

Peach print dress. £48, Trouva | Apricot tie top. £20, Collectif | Orange pocket dress. £49, Nobody’s Child | Orange tie dress. £24, Tu.

Peach and Apricot Iced Tea

If you are a fellow tea drinker trying to push through the hot days, we can only sympathise. A morning caffeine fix from can of Coke just isn’t the same. After stubbornly beginning the day with a proper brew, Sian switches over to iced tea laden with fruit. It’s not quite the same – you won’t “oooh” as you sit on the sofa, it won’t bookend your to-do list in quite the same way – but it is utterly delicious in its own right and will keep your perkiness levels up until after that Zoom meeting you were hoping would be cancelled. Of course you can use fresh fruit for this, especially when it’s in season, but tinned has the benefit of the extra juice which adds much-needed sweetness to the strong tea. Besides, “ripen at home” fruit could take anywhere from the length of an episode of Sewing Bee to a week to get its act together. We cannot wait that long for joy.

Serves 4

Takes 10 minutes to make, 20 minutes to cool and then some time to muddle – make an hour before you wish to serve.

Ingredients:

• 750ml strong black tea. This is probably the size of a good teapot, otherwise make up a measuring jug with two teabags.

• 1 tin peach slices in juice

• 1 tin apricot slices or halves in juice

• 2 tbsp apricot jam. We are firmly in the Bonne Maman fan club.

• A few mint leaves, roughly chopped

• Ice

Method:

• Make up your batch of tea. It needs to be a little stronger than you’d probably make for a normal brew – steep for five minutes, even if you’re usually a three-minute dunker. Remove the teabags and leave to cool for a little while.

• Meanwhile, slice your apricot halves if needed – anything the size you can pick out from your glass with your fingers/the spike of a cocktail umbrella is good.

• Add the tea, fruit and jam to a large jug and mix well. Leave to mingle together for around an hour. If your jug fits in the fridge, so much the better.

• Top up with ice and stir in fresh mint leaves just before serving.

• Leave on your desk and make your way through the whole jug throughout the afternoon. The last few glasses taste excellent with sparkling wine and any leftover fruit is delicious with yoghurt for breakfast the next day.

Peaches and cream

You might think that a BBQ recipe book is an unlikely place to find an abundance of fruit recipes, but LIVE FIRE is a veritable fruit bowl. Helen Graves’s debut cookbook is packed with your five a day: peaches and nectarines feature heavily, so do cherries, apricots and even grapefruit. It’s a unique element for a book that we had anticipated to be rather heavy on the meat. Of course meat plays a big role (we’ll be making Adana kebabs and the jerk chicken very soon), but vegetarians are definitely catered for and it’s the unexpected fruity numbers that we’re most excited by: the jammy peaches and cream with ginger nut biscuits pictured above, or the backyard-style apricot-glazed pork ribs. There’s even an upside-down nectarine cake. Fruit is plentiful in every section – in the salsas, the dips, the pickles, the chilli sauces – and the book feels so fresh and zingy for it. LIVE FIRE is seasonal, so you’ll be tempted to fire up the grill in December and it’s full of tweaks and suggestions if you’re not blessed with outdoor cooking space. Peppered throughout are interesting and thoughtful essays about live fire cooking from grilling experts. There’s nothing one-note about this lovely book – it’s as far-removed from a long-life bun as you could imagine.

Pit your wits: Forgotten Fruit | peachy keen | oranges are not the only fruit | strawberry hooray | we put these on everything | a sticky situation

This week, Sian has been eating buffalo wings and drinking hugos and Laura has been to see Sharon Van Etten and Phoebe Bridgers. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Peaches and cream image by Rob Billington for LIVE FIRE: Seasonal Barbecue Recipes and Stories of Live Fire Traditions Old and New, published by Hardie Grant.