Major financial institutions in New York, Washington and New Jersey are under orange alert today. The rest of the country is still yellow. This weekend in Georgia it was kinda peachy.
We rendevoused with an armed roadside peach dealer just outside of Atlanta. She had a pocket knife and wasn't afraid to use it to her advantage, slicing a sweet, succulent triangle of fruit and holding it in front of us as we browsed.
The minute it hit my tongue the deal was done. Skip the pints and pecks, we got us a box. A big box. We agreed to split it with the Goodsteins and divided off their share when we got back to the island.
With half a box gone we were reduced to having... a lot of peaches. They had apparently multiplied in the back of the car. When we got up the next morning it appeared they had infiltrated most of the kitchen counters.
Locals will tell you that peaches do not asexually reproduce in eight-hour cycles, but there is no way I could have possibly bought that many peaches.
On the third day, they started softening. By Saturday they tettered on the precipice between fragrant and turning. It was time to take back the kitchen.
I bought the additional ingredients and started with a large peach cobbler and a batch of peach jam. After another grocery run for raspberries and more pectin it went to peach-raspberry jam. Pits, peels and juice covered every available surface, but fresh fruit remained. Another pectin and raspberry run and the problem was literally contained.
So maybe we had to throw away some food to make room in the freezer. We triumphed. The peaches didn't win this time.
Beware of roadside strangers bearing knives.

Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs