What does a fruit bowl mean to you?

I spotted a fruit bowl on the dining table in a neighbour’s house yesterday and it got me thinking. We no longer keep a fruit bowl.  We might have the odd bowl of oranges but the rest of the fruit lives in the fridge.

And yet when we were children, there was always a fruit bowl.  Most likely full of seasonal apples, pears, maybe bananas. Our paternal grandparents maintained a fruit bowl almost as part of their interior design. It was located in the front room of their post war semi, a room which was kept for “best” and full of rather hard, uncompromising 1930s furniture. Comfortable “living” took place in the back room where a teapot, snug in its knitted cosy, sat on the table always protected by its “cloth”.

As young visitors, we would be offered an apple from the fruit bowl in the smart front room out of hospitality and with a degree of pride. I cannot remember ever offering my visitors a piece of fruit.

To the generation which lived through the deprivations of the war and rationing, fruit seems to have a luxurious air, a sign of good fortune and successful homemaking. And indeed this folk memory lives on as kitchens in show homes throughout the country are not complete without the ubiquituous bowl of fruit, although more likelysome faux designer stainless steel basket rather than the classic wooden bowl.  

But now not only is fruit no longer so desirable but many children refuse to eat it notwithstanding that (or maybe because) successive governments have tried to “prescribe” its consumption.

What do you think? Do you keep a fruit bowl?