Peaches and Herb

s a child, there were four things I didn't like to eat: tomatoes, cheese, cottage cheese, and peaches.

I eventually embraced tomatoes and cheese. Every time I try cottage cheese again to see if my palate has changed, I'm revolted again for the first time. The peach that I mainly objected to was the canned peach in syrup or fruit cocktail, though I didn't care for other peach flavored things like Peach-Os. Then, as a cafeteria worker in academy working the supper shift with Angela Barber, I decided to like peaches. And I have appreciated them ever since (I'm sure that nectarines had a hand in bringing me to their cousins.).

Fast forward to the last 36 hours. My sister has been getting peaches at the store the past few shopping trips, and they've tasted quite wonderful out of hand. Last night a Union College student called me to say his parents were coming through with a bunch of peaches and pears from Colorado. I asked how big the boxes were, and when I heard they came in 22 and 19 pound boxes, I said I couldn't process that many and didn't bother asking how much they were. This morning, I told my sister about the call, and she expressed interest in getting some peaches. Alas I didn't remember the student's name (I still don't know how he got my number.), but I said I'd ask the student workers if they knew who it was. Long story short, the aforementioned parents parked their trailer full of fruit right in front of my work (located on campus), and the father came in and announced to everyone that he had peaches for 25 and pears for 27 dollars a box.

Now I have 22 pounds of peaches I must use before they turn. I did a quick search in my email of my over 2000 saved recipes from my RSS feeds (a majority come from tastespotting, which is an aggregate of food blogs with photos). I have 43 choices, four of which are ice creams or gelato. But I've been wanting to make a galette for a very long time, and I have two little tubs of local quark cheese I got at the farmer's market almost too long ago.

I'm going to make a peach quark ginger galette, an ice cream/gelato, a crisp, and probably a cobbler but maybe a muffin of some sort. I'll try to document these here.

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische.