It is Peach Season!
Our peach crop this year is abundant and amazing. Typically by mid-May all the peaches are either picked or eaten by the birds. But this year, I am still picking peaches into June. The tree is still full of fruit and hopefully by this weekend, all the peaches will be gleaned, ripe or not. Peach season is always an exciting time around our house.
I am not sure what varietal peach tree we have, but these are true peaches~gorgeous, fleshy fruit that is flavorful and fuzzy. I’m not even sure you can find a fuzzy peach in a typical grocery store chain anymore.
We call these our “bend over and eat peaches”. They are so juicy and so sweet. Many a shirt has been ruined with peach juice.
Peach Crisp
This year the first dessert we make is peach crisp. I use the recipe from one of my favorite cook books. If you are not familiar with Susan Branch, she is an author, watercolorist and designer. Born in Southern California, she lives in an 1849 home in Martha’s Vineyard.
Her cookbooks are works of art with handwritten copy. One of my favorites is The Summer Cookbook, published in 1995. The peach crisp recipe is based on the Peach & Plum Crisp one in this book. You can tell I use this recipe a lot as the page is a bit dog-eared! I believe this book may be out of print, but Amazon has it here.
You can’t go wrong with anything crisp~~apple, peach, pear, and cherry. I use this recipe for all fruits because the “crisp” part is the perfect topping. I adjust the recipe by increasing the quantity of one fruit vs. two. Click here for the recipe.
Peach Salsa
What is interesting about picking fresh fruit, is that it doesn’t last very long. So I need to use the fruit within a few days. As a result, yesterday we made peach salsa.
I didn’t really follow a recipe this time. This batch is made with tomatoes (cherry ones from the garden), yellow and orange bell pepper (as I didn’t have any green or red), peaches, cilantro, red onion, jalapeño peppers, lime juice, and salt.
More Recipes
This salsa is perfect with chips, but also goes well with fish or chicken. If you would like to get the recipe from a previous post on Peach Salsa, click here. I have two other blog posts with peach recipes~~Tomato, Peach and Corn Salad (which is delicious!) and homemade Peach Pie.
We will be picking more peaches today and maybe peach ice cream this afternoon? At some point, my family will tell me they are “peached out”. That is my cue to preserve the rest of the harvest.
Have a peachy day!
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YUM!!! Just look at those fuzzies! Oh you are so blessed!
I love peach jelly! I love peach crisp!!!
And I love Susan Branch!!! Thanks for all the smiles. (And now I am drooling for a good peach, which is difficult to find here until they’re ripe later in the season here.) The grocery store ones just aren’t very good anymore – they hybrided the yum right out of them.
Michele, I am so tired of store bought fruit that looks like fruit but tastes like NOTHING. We just compared a store bought apricot (so huge) against my home grown ones (much smaller), and there was no comparison. The big apricot was flavorless and bitter while mine are juicy and sweet. Go figure.
Here in South Florida our mango season has started; we have three varieties in our yard, but my favorite is the Glenn. I wait patiently for the fruit to finally ripen, then they start all at once, and we have so many that we give them away. The best is to eat them just off the tree and cooled in the fridge for a while, and in smoothies. Have you ever tried using mango in a crisp? I wonder if it would work. I am trying to find a mango salsa recipe that is not too spicy, to use some of them up. I have never tried a fresh peach, only the canned ones, and I even find those delicious, so a fresh one must be heaven!!
Elena, your mangos sound so delicious. I love mangos but not sure we can grow them here…? Anyway, I would just substitute mangos in my peach salsa recipe. I do not like spicy salsa at all and this recipe you can certainly control how hot you want it. I prefer my fresh and flavorful. This year, I’m wondering if I can hot bath and can my peach salsa. Not sure how that would affect the flavor but I sure would like to have it long after peach season. Yes, I would also try mango crisp…why not? I recently made another peach crisp and didn’t add anything to the fresh fruit. Just layered it in a baking dish and put the crumble on top. So yummy and not as sweet. Good luck. Let me know what recipes you try!
It’s peach time in Central Texas as well! I made peach preserves and peach jelly this weekend. yummy!
Karen, I have never made peach jelly! I am staring at so many peaches and apricots in my kitchen right now trying to figure out where to start!
These are all making me hungry for peaches now! Yes, we learned when we were at your home how juicy those peaches were! Fortunately, no ruined shirts here! Leaning over the sink to enjoy them was the best!
Chloe, wish you were here helping me eat these this weekend! I am surprised the peaches have lasted into June. We picked the tree clean this a.m. and several are still a bit hard. They (and the apricots) have taken over the kitchen!
These all look delicious ! Thank you for sharing them right now. Perfect timing. A must try for me.
What a GREAT POST! Thanks ever so much for all the great recipes and tips!
Miss Lindy, thank you so much!
Oh peaches!!! That salsa looks fabulous Mary! And if you make ice cream, I’m on my way down! 😉 Have a lovely time and happy eating!
The salsa is good and I am actually making peach ice cream now. Pie will be this weekend, as I am sure all the peaches will become ripe at once!
Love the post and the recipe book!
Thank you! Just put a peach pie in the oven!
My mouth is watering Mary!! Love the post and the recipe book!
Oh…I love tree ripe peaches…fuzz and all!!! Sadly, the peach supply here has dwindled — more and more peach growers had to meet stiff insect control standards set out for them. So over the years, they simply stopped growing them. When my folks first moved here in the 70s — just up the highway from them was a huge grove…I think it was 40 acres. Long story short — Pezzel’s Peaches stopped growing peaches in the late 90s.. It seems the kids did not want to do the work to grow healthy fruit and they cut down every single tree. Heartbreaking. Peach crisp is my favorite! Well, any kind of crisp (except cherry) is always top of my list. Love the cookbook…thinking I might look for it on Amazon!
Tanya,
I love your peach story. It is so sad to think all those trees were cut down! Just put a peach pie in the oven with a new crust recipe. Hoping it is not soggy, but it usually tastes good anyway! Wore your earrings and bracelet yesterday~~so in love with them!
Looks delicious, I love peach deserts. Our peach season isn’t until August/September. Last year I made peach cobbler, it was wonderful warm with vanilla ice cream. I also grilled the peaches. Cut them in half and put them on the grill cut side on the grill. Eat warm with vanilla ice cream. Home made Peach ice cream sound’s great!
Karen,
I may be back east in August to celebrate my aunt’s 100th birthday-of course it all depends on the virus situation. I would love to have east coast peaches. I’ve never grilled them~~sounds delicious!