Week 10

Two kinds of peaches-summer lady and elberta. Fire sweet and fire pearl nectarines. The plums are fortune and satsuma.

There are only two more weeks of summer fruits. Many of the local peaches are done for the season. I’m going to miss these treats. The grapes are beginning to come to market, along with figs. The Valley has a big fig celebration next week in honor of this ancient fruit still grown here.

Carrying coal to Newcastle

All those peaches in my csa box. Then at lunch today, my friend comes bearing fresh peaches and a bag of frozen peaches.

What to do with so many peaches? Make a cobbler.

Middle of the summer

This is Box 6 of our summer fruit subscription. Since there will be 12 boxes, this is the middle.

There are three plum varieties in this assortment, along with one peach variety and one type of nectarine that we’ve had before.

The nectarines are very ripe so we are quickly devouring them.

Yellow and white

As in peaches and nectarines. This is Week 3 of the csa fruit boxes Sadly, there are only three pluots, and the note says it’s the last of that variety. This variety has dark red flesh and tastes like a Santa Rosa plum of yesteryear that I remember as a child.

Peach cobbler

Terry brought home two large bags of frozen peaches from a friend at a volunteer job where they both work. The generous friend had planned to share his bounty with four volunteers, but only two showed up today.

Since the peaches had begun to thaw thus needing to be used immediately, and I had all those fresh peaches you saw on Monday, I took one bag to our next door neighbors, the sisters who take my csa extras. Reba mentioned that she would make a cobbler.

I ran back home and started looking for cobbler recipes because Terry does not like my usual cobbler. I found a couple, cobbled them together, and put a big cobbler in the oven as we were sitting down to dinner (leftovers).

Here is Terry’s dish for dessert. He gets a scoop of ice cream on his. He said it was very good, much better than my other cobblers. Okay. I’ll use this method now on.

Summer is here

Just got my first summer fruit CSA box. Two kinds of peaches, yellow nectarines, pluots, and ONE peachcot.

More cooking with peaches

I found a few recipes for peach salsa that sounded like something I would like, and even though the one I finally chose made 4 pints, I cut it down and just made one jar.  If I make it again, I would add more sweetener.  The recipe called for a small amount of honey, but I think it would work well with agave nectar.

I started with these ingredients:

We had the finished product with turkey for dinner:

I highly recommend that red pepper, called a Fresno pepper.  It’s hotter than jalapeno, and it works well with red and yellow salsas.

Peach season

For the summer, my CSA offered a stonefruit collection each week along with my usual box of produce.  I jumped at the chance because the producer has a small farm with one-of-a-kind trees and the fruit usually goes to fancy restaurants in the LA and Bay area, not to local grocers.  Here was my chance to have tree-ripened fruit that was grown only a few miles from my house, much of it of heirloom quality.

It has been wonderful.  My only complaint would be too many nectarines and that’s because I am not a big fan of that stonefruit but my neighbor has been delighted to take my extras.  We are now in the heart of peach season, and here is what I got yesterday (just peaches, there were also nectarines and plums).

Three kinds of peaches

Although I love to just eat a fresh peach, I also like to bake with them so today I decided to make peach dumplings.  I wrapped a piece of puff pastry around each peach after I had peeled, halved and filled it with sugar, spices and butter.  Sprinkled more sugar on top and baked for about 25 minutes.  Delicious.

Peach dumpling

I’m thinking about making some peach salsa as I got tomatoes, onions, and a jalapeno pepper in my produce box.  Just need to find a recipe.