Oh Right, This Again

The lovely peach crisp, adapted from a recipe in The Art of Simple Food. Only with a splash of bourbon, because cooked peaches, like a Kentucky grandmother, need a splash of bourbon to bring out true excellence. Wait, what?

Ben has started teaching summer camp this week, which he’ll be doing for most of the rest of the summer. I’m still at home trying to justify my continued existence (my grandmother tells me I’m gestating, which is a full-time job. I still feel lazy). Which means I’m trying to play housewife again. In case you don’t remember how this went last time, let’s just summarize with the fact that I fired myself after a week.

So task one as a housewife: make sure we have something to eat for most meals. That means meal plan! What did I plan this week to cook for us? The most decadent birthday cake possible, and a peach crisp.

Yes, that is actually all I managed to plan for meals. Yes, I should probably be fired again.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about both the crisp and the cake. Especially the crisp, because it’s currently in the oven, although the monumental I-think-I-might-be-crazy cake is terrifyingly thrilling, too. But I really ought to have something more… nutritious planned out. Or maybe just a full meal. My last attempt at planning a meal? “Well, we’ve got fresh corn, and half a steak leftover from when Dad took us to dinner. So we can each have an ear of corn and about two ounces of steak. Oh, there may also be some beans, too.”

Seriously. Fire me.

Okay, to be fair, this time at least I bought us fresh veggies. And Ben is really excited about the baking projects, so he’s currently refusing to take my resignation. All of which means I’m doing somewhat better than last time, so I have another week to get my act together before this experiment turns disastrous. So next week’s goal: plan more veggies, and maybe work some meat into the equation.

P.S. Turns out Ben brought his leftover meatballs home from lunch, which meant we had TWO portions. So dinner became meatballs, buttered noodles, and those fabulous corn ears from the market. Not too shabby!

IT’S PEACH SEASON

I would also show you a photo of the raspberries and cherries, but we already ate them.

My first peach of the season was on the drive home from Asheville. It was purchased at a farm stand in North Caroline, trucked up from South Carolina. It was quite tasty, although not as hugely remarkable as I remember.

Today, I picked up half a dozen from a stand at the market by the library. I had a lovely chat with the gentleman behind the table, and he selected a peach that would be ready for eating this afternoon.

There are no words.

The juice dripped just everywhere. The flesh of the peach? It just melted in my mouth. I just… no words. I will eat at least one peach every day until there are no more summer peaches. Because as we have discovered, those vaguely orange-red spheroids in the grocery store are not peaches.

In fact, grocery store produce in general seems to leave me dissatisfied. I’ve always thought I disliked cherries. Today, I picked up a small carton at the market from last week’s harvest (there are no more cherries this season, it seems) for Ben because he adores cherries, and I tasted one. And I actually liked it. So yeah, grocery store produce? You are for tropical fruits that do not grow here. And middle of winter vegetables when we just need something green. But not for summer produce. Oh no.