Stone Fruit Season

August 21, 2020 1:37 PM

"In the midst of my ennui, wet and haggard and broken, I ate a cold sweet peach. And I wanted to eat another one!" Shing Yin Khor on peaches, for Catapult.

In the first installment of Curiosity Americana, Of Mufflers And Men, they explore roadside statues like Paul Bunyan.

posted by ChuraChura (32 comments total)

The story of the "shower peach" she tells reminds me of this wonderful quote from Alice Walker:

"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring and because it has fresh peaches in it."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:44 PM on August 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

(Shing Yin uses they/them pronouns)
posted by ChuraChura at 1:46 PM on August 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

Just a heads up! Current recall on peaches :(
posted by Actively Avoiding the Noid at 1:49 PM on August 21, 2020

This is just to say
posted by The otter lady at 1:54 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is lovely, thank you for posting it. I felt sure I've seen their work before, and sure enough they were at SPX (the Small Press Expo) last year - couple video links - Shing Yin Khor on a SPX 2019 panel on queer science fiction and world-building and SPX 2018 interview with Shing Yin Khor.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:00 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Oh and the point is, another autobiographical food comic of theirs won an Ignatz award in 2018: Say It With Noodles.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Growing up in Georgia my elementary school would have a baking contest every year based on the three most important state crops: peaches, pecans and peanuts. I never competed because my parents worked too much to bake in the evenings, but it's such a memorable contest theme that I remember it 30+ years later.

As Shing Yin Khor mentions, Peaches are from Northwest China. Peanuts come from somewhere in South America. Even pecans originated elsewhere, over to the west by the Mississippi river. Now, I have come to prefer big Virginia peanuts, and I'll eat a pecan no matter where it is from. But even though I live hundreds of miles away from my home state I will go out of my way to buy a Georgia peach. There are other good peaches, like Chambersberg here in PA, but they are not as flavorful and candy-like as the ones from the Peach State.

There's even a Peach truck that drives peaches from Peach County, Georgia all the way to the suburbs outside of my northern city. I bought a box of nearly 70 peaches for $40, which seems like a lot for fruit. But they were all perfect. I had to spend a fair amount of time processing them into jam, peach chips, and frozen sorbet because we could only eat so many while they were not yet over ripe. I'm still eating the Jam and it tastes like sunshine.

There are many reasons that I no longer live in Georgia, but I did miss the peaches until I found my current connection. I would really like it if those big cauldrons of boiled green peanuts would catch on here, too.
posted by Alison at 2:10 PM on August 21, 2020 [9 favorites]

Having formerly lived in Georgia for many years, and now living in California, California stone fruit take my personal cake.

But that may be the two pounds of pluots I ate this week talking.
posted by billjings at 2:14 PM on August 21, 2020 [9 favorites]

Someone took all the peaches off our peach tree this week. I hope they enjoyed one of them as much as this author enjoyed theirs. I wish they would have stopped at one, though.
posted by eirias at 2:18 PM on August 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

That was beautiful. I am reminded a little of Li-Young Lee's poem Persimmons.
posted by Westringia F. at 2:39 PM on August 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

Here in Seattle, the California Peaches have been shit this year. Not ripe, and before they can ripen, moldy and gross...
posted by Windopaene at 2:55 PM on August 21, 2020

I've been dreaming of the peaches I used to get that had to be eaten over the kitchen sink to make clean-up easier. Shower-peach is a better idea. It would probably adapt nicely to the mango as well. Or maybe one sits on the edge of the tub with a mango, then stands and rinses afterward.

Windopaene: Down in Portland, I also have yet to get a good peach this year. Didn't stop me from making peach ice cream last night though. What the heart wants... I just had to supplement the base with more sugar that I would have preferred.
posted by hydra77 at 3:06 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am enjoying some organic Costco plums right now. The Cal peaches I bought a couple of weeks ago were fabulous, but Perry, Utah, has some mighty fine peaches, and heavenly apricots too. The plums are incredible this year, out of my area. i bought these plums yesterday to make fig/plum butter of some sort, but the plums are ripening one at a glorious, eat over the sink, time. I don't think I will bottle them.
posted by Oyéah at 3:15 PM on August 21, 2020

A cold peach?
Like, stored in a refrigerator?

What kind of a person would do that to a peach?
posted by madajb at 4:07 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's striking how much more people seem to like peaches than nectarines – as though the hairs (trichomes) which contain all the allergens and other potentially irritating and dangerous bioactive stuff are actually essential to peak experience flavor.

Yet another food manifestation of Bacon's dictum: "there is no excellent thing without some strangeness in proportion"?
posted by jamjam at 4:20 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Windopaene, we got some fantastic peaches at Metropolitan Market a few weeks ago! They were local though, from Pence Orchards in Yakima County. Highly recommended if you can find them.
posted by potrzebie at 4:45 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I prefer nectarines because they don't have any fuzz - there doesn't seem to be any difference in flavour to me. I've always lived in places just a bit too far north to grow peaches outdoors, so they still seem a bit exotic to me, although I have had some lovely ones grown in greenhouses. The idea of having vast amounts of them from a garden tree leaves me slightly boggled - we had a very small nectarine tree in our garden that produced about two fruits in a good year until my dad gave up on it. White peaches taste a bit better to me than golden ones, or at least they did since my sense of taste was borked by The Virus. My all-time favourite peaches are the little flat ones that some supermarkets call disco peaches, and which can be eaten tidily in four or so bites. . They also come in golden or white and fuzzy or nectarine versions, which is sort of interesting genetically, so my very favourites are the white nectarine ones.
posted by Fuchsoid at 4:49 PM on August 21, 2020

Intellectually, I accept that other peaches are probably fine, but my heart belongs to Colorado peaches. Sadly, 80 to 90 percent of the crop got killed by frost this year, so I’ve had to turn to other, lesser peaches.
posted by heurtebise at 4:50 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Windopaene: Down in Portland, I also have yet to get a good peach this year. Didn't stop me from making peach ice cream last night though. What the heart wants... I just had to supplement the base with more sugar that I would have preferred.

I found some of the Maryhill peaches at New Seasons earlier in the year (a.. month ago? more? *TIME*) that were pretty good. Like the author/artist, I only knew about peaches via canned stuff, growing up. I was well into adulthood before I ever had a real peach, and longer still before I had a real good peach, and that was a life-changing event.
posted by curious nu at 5:18 PM on August 21, 2020

Don't forget about Colorado peaches, grown on the Western Slope. Palisades Peaches, as they are known. Due to a devastating freeze on the morning of April 14th, 2020 has the smallest crop since 1999, so this is probably not the best year to get you all excited about Colorado peaches. One more disappointing thing about 2020 for us in the Mountain Time Zone.
posted by kozad at 5:40 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

This was extremely good. So many good lines in here, and I appreciate the peach/butt face in the Georgia section.

(I'm currently missing the state fair grilled peach that I would be having next week if not for Covid. Having a fuck you I survived peach sounds pretty good, though)
posted by dinty_moore at 5:54 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

To all who responded..

OMG Pence are great, Frog Hollow as well.
with my limited shopping, it has been bleak. I get to the Met Market on MI every week, will check next week.
posted by Windopaene at 7:36 PM on August 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I remember listening to the radio in the 1970s, and late every summer hearing ads with a jingle referring to "peaches, plums, and nectarines". It seemed odd to my kid ears, sine that wasn't a brand being advertised. But I suppose calling the category "stone fruit" might have given 70s radio audiences the wrong idea.
posted by NumberSix at 9:49 PM on August 21, 2020

I lived, I lived, I lived

for some reason, i am crying now.

thanks for this post.
posted by tehgubner at 10:14 PM on August 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sorry about that, Windopaene, we have had the best peaches this year here in California that I can remember. I guess we are keeping the good ones. Even better than the much-overlooked and exceedingly delicious Alabama peaches I had last summer.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 11:55 PM on August 21, 2020

It's been a good year for peaches here at the Bee & Rose. There really is something about a perfectly ripe August peach that makes it feel like life's worth living.
posted by drlith at 5:15 AM on August 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

I got a pound of donut peaches and two pounds of white peaches last week at my CSA. I've been eating through them as fast as I can - my bag lunches all this week have involved either a whole donut peach or a cut-up white peach as dessert - but the last few were starting to look a little mushy and developed brown spots.

This week I got another pound of donuts and two pounds of yellow peaches, most of which weren't quite ripe yet. One seemed good though - so breakfast today has been a compote of three different peach varietals. Life is good.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:42 AM on August 22, 2020

I also bought a case of peaches this summer from one of those Georgia peach truck operations and split it three ways with a couple of friends so that none of us was stuck trying to figure out what to do with 70 peaches. I have always been Team Nectarine, but godDAMN were those peaches incredible. Next summer, I might not share the box.
posted by briank at 6:51 AM on August 22, 2020

Having to spend all my summers growing up working on the family peach farm in Central California kinda ruined peaches for me growing up. The heat, the constant itching from the fuzz, not being able to have a real summer vacation or go to summer camp with my friends. At least I got to work in the packing shed instead of out in the fields. For a long time the smell of fresh peaches was associated in my mind with the smell of diesel from the tractors. Hated the things, at least in their original form. But my grandma's canned peaches were absolutely delicious in a cobbler or with ice cream or with yogurt.
posted by technodelic at 7:52 AM on August 22, 2020

Your attitude mirrors my uncle's, re: chickens, technodelic, since he grew up on a farm. Never phased my mother, though.

But seriously -- who among us is eating peaches (or nectarines) in the shower? I mean, I carry food all around the house, dropping crumbs everywhere but I draw the line at the bathroom.
posted by Rash at 9:27 AM on August 22, 2020

Like a shower beer, but perhaps even better!
posted by ChuraChura at 10:11 AM on August 22, 2020

I mean, that's definitely a 'I only have the motivation to do one thing, I need to do these two things, having to choose and triage means I would do zero things, I'm going to try to combine in an effort to make myself less disgusting' sort of depression power move. Like if you're a sim and all of your bars are red.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:55 AM on August 22, 2020 [2 favorites]