Stale Blue Peeps Still Life

What would you do if it’s June and you found an opened box of Marshmallow PEEPS® on top of your daughter-in-law’s washing machine in the laundry room? My son’s washing machine, too but there they were, sitting there, already opened. Someone had eaten half the double box of the little chicks. And true, Easter was the end of April so how hard and dried out must they be by now? Then I thought to myself, I like them with a bit of stale crust, not fresh. When was the last time you ate a Marshmallow Peep?

Darn, they’re BLUE.

I’m always going on and on about how I don’t like to eat anything blue. Wah Wah Wah. Blue food grosses me out I always say. Blueberries are really deep purple not blue. I never liked those raspberry popsicles, either. Blue food seems so fake, like the frosting on a Smurf Cake!

HA! Okay, I won’t eat one but– there was some great light streaming through their foyer windows, even with the new UV protection film they had put on last week. What to photograph? The older kids at dive team, youngest sleeping, Jack watching Tom and Jerry. I took the box of blue PEEPS, put them on the stone tile floor, turned them a bit, let the light catch on the cellophane and reflect from their sugary skin. Oh yes, I was photographing the stale blue peeps, how interesting the light was. I could see a bit of sparkle from the sugar coating. I wondered if they were still moist inside? When was Easter, I calculated the degree of freshness. That stale factor seemed attractive to me and I what does it matter anyway because remember I don’t eat anything BLUE.

I’ll just separate the one from the herd, flock, group, family, row…..yes, there it was, the white marshmallowy interior of a PEEP. \

The guts exposed.

Let me adjust the white balance on the camera settings with the white insides showing now. See how the light reflects on the white?

Oh I remembered the Mother Goose Rhyme about old Hannah Bantry or maybe she was young.

Hannah Bantry,
In the pantry,
Gnawing at a mutton bone.
How she gnawed,
How she clawed it,
When she found herself alone.

And you know what happened next. I broke the cardinal rule about Don’t eat anything BLUE. I ripped off the tail end of that PEEP and it was chewy and very stale. Dried to perfection. Just seasoned not raw or gushy. Totally disgusting. Delicious. Childhood remembered, but they were yellow then. I ate it, chewed it, swallowed the sweet sweet sweetness of the sugary confection. And photographed the evidence. PEEPS® and I are about a year apart in age.

I put back the other ones in the still opened, airing-out-box of PEEPS®, right back on top of the washing machine in the laundry room.

I confess.

I ate it AND enjoyed doing so but limited consumption to a lone PEEP. Honest. Even though it was BLUE!!

There are all sorts of shapes, recipes and crazy info about PEEPS® and the Just Born Manufacturers.

What will you admit to eating when no one is watching?