June Musings: Just Peachy

 

It's peach season.  Typically, I wait until after July 4 to even consider buying peaches but this year I bought my first half peck of peaches on June 3.  I decided last year that I was cheating myself of a whole additional five or six weeks of peach season.  And now I discover that peaches generally can be had until mid-September instead of the first week of August.  So, I'm planning to eat more peaches this year.  later:  or maybe not.  I've just been reading that only 10% of the peach crop survived that late freezing spell we had in March.  Where the orchards were bringing in 400 bushels or more daily for weeks on end, they are bringing in less than 40.  I'll eat peaches but I did note I was paying dearly for them and I just can't justify fruit that comes dearly.

I've always loved peaches.  Peaches are among my first memories of harvesting with Granny.  She had a peach tree in her yard that never produced a thing but tiny little rock-hard pit sized peaches and those generally were full of worms.  But across the field were 60 acres or more of peaches and the man who owned the orchard gave her permission to go gather what she wanted each year.

I still recall standing in the orchard with the hot sun beating down upon us, feeling the scratchy leaves, and the fuzzy warm peach in my hand.  Granny urged me to not bite it until it had been washed and peeled and that is how I still prefer my peaches.

John is a complete heathen when it comes to peaches.  He eats them well washed with peeling on.  Ugh!

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Granny froze peaches, dried slices for hand pies in the winter, made a batch of homemade peach ice cream once a summer and then made her version of peach cobbler.  She baked it in a white enamel pan with red rim that I only ever saw her use for two things: Peach cobbler and Green Apple Pie.  Her peach cobbler had a bottom crust and a lattice top crust. It was, in my opinion, more like a deep dish pie, but I learned early on not to tell her that.

Mama often made peach preserves with her bounty of peaches. She also canned peach halves for salads through the winter months and froze slices to make her version of Peach Cobbler.  That is the version I use to this day, the Easy Peach Cobbler that has 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 stick butter and just 1 cup of fruit.  I think Mama always cheated and added more fruit and that's usually what I do, too, unless fruit is limited.

Grandmother also made her version of Cobbler.  Mama tells me about it, but I don't recall ever eating it.  Grandmother's Peach Cobbler had a bottom crust and then she put in her filling which was a heavy syrup with peach slices.  Then she topped it with pastry scraps from her bottom crust and as those browned on top, she'd push them down into the syrup and lay on another layer of scraps.

Over the years I've produced my own share of peach products.  I've made preserves, frozen slices and canned halves.  I've made peach ice cream, too, but it's been many years.  John doesn't care for peach ice cream, so I tend to buy mine now at the Peach Sheds where I visit to buy peaches.  I only indulge once or twice a summer, but I do savor it!

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One year, in a hard financial year for us, I was given permission to gather culls from a peach orchard.  A friend of my husband's came by to tell us of it and we took his old army duffle bag and filled it to the brim with all the peaches we could gather off the ground.  That's the year I made peach jam, canned peach halves and froze slices.  It was a wondrous bounty in a year when grocery money was less than scarce.  I don't even know if orchards allow folks to cull peaches anymore.  This particular orchard had been contracted to the local freezer plant and once they'd gathered all they could produce, the farmer couldn't sell (it was part of the contract) so he put the word out about town and the orchard was cleaned ready for the next season.

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My favorite peach ice cream recipe is very easy.  2 cups crushed ripe peaches, 1 tsp. lemon juice, 1.5 cups sugar and 2 quarts of half and half.  I used to use an old-fashioned churn ice cream maker to make ice cream and just layered salt and ice around the canister then let it churn for a good 20 minutes or so until it was like a soft serve.  Then I'd pack the canister in fresh ice to let the ice cream ripen a bit.  It was simple flavors and oh so very good!

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My favorite ways to eat peaches though are much simpler than ice cream.  Sliced peaches frozen until just beginning to crystallize served with a bit of sugar sprinkled over the top and then pour over a good healthy bit of canned evaporated milk.  I haven't had that treat in a few years because most evaporated milk these days has carrageenan in it now, but I found some at Kroger this past winter and I plan to have my favorite treat this summer.

Grandmother used to take a box of her summer frozen peaches from the freezer and thaw them at room temperature until almost all the ice was dissolved and serve them to me in the manner I describe above.  She'd serve me strawberries that way as well.  You honestly can't beat the simplicity of flavors with either of those lovely fruits in my opinion.  That Grandmother only made them that way for me is also part of my fondness for them served in this way.  It reminds me of being an adored grandchild, the only granddaughter.

Another favorite way to eat peaches: sliced over warm peanut butter toast.  That was an idea I got at a Weight Watchers meeting and boy that is a treat for breakfast in summer.  

Of course, just peeling and eating is sufficient to please me, too.  

And one summer I made a Chicken dish that had basil and peaches in it and that was delicious, but I only dared make it when I was alone because somehow, I just felt sure it would be too strange for John to even consider.

In the South, at some point, once strawberry season is over and done, you're bound to come across Pound Cake with sliced sugared peaches over the top followed by a big dollop of whipped cream of some sort, too.  

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When I was growing up, we bought a house in the country that used to be an old homesite.  The place came with a small orchard of its own that contained pears, peaches, and apples.  The peach trees were much older than the ones that were grown by farmers for markets and certainly far more disease resistant.  I don't think ours were ever treated even once from the time they budded until they bore fruit.  The peaches weren't big by any means, but they were delicious.  

Most intriguing to me was the white peach.  White peaches have gained in popularity over the last 20 years but in my teens, we simply hadn't heard of them at all and so this peach was totally unique to us.  Mama didn't preserve it, but we did eat them fresh each year.   

These peaches were truly white inside with a rosy heart around the ruby red pit.  They were delicately flavored and tasted more floral than they did fruity.   My Grandfather who knew peaches almost as well as he knew bartering suggested they were an old variety from one of the Indian tribes.  Perhaps they were.  I just know they were like nothing we'd ever seen before and I was pleased they lasted another ten or twelve years, not dying out until I was a grown woman.

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