You can tell by the smell first.
As I walked through our kitchen the last few days, I couldn’t help but notice the sweet tang wafting from the bowl in the center of our island. Nestled in a barely open plastic bag were five perfectly ripe peaches: fuzzy, soft, and ready to be eaten.
A few months ago in this very space, I talked about the fleeting perfection of the strawberry. Here in central North Carolina, delicious fruit and vegetables aren’t hard to come by in most seasons. And for these past few weeks, life has been just peachy.
My family is originally from Japan, a country that takes fruit quality to an insanely obsessive level. So when it came to peaches, we almost always avoided buying them from grocery stores. They were often hard and bitter or flavorless and starchy. The sole contenders were either white peaches—which are similar to ones found in Japan, or the donut variety. But even those tended to be hit or miss. We never bought them from farmers’ markets…until now.
In the past few weeks, my husband and I moved to the Sunset Hills/Lindley Park area. Now, we’re just a 10-minute walk from the Corner Farmers Market, which runs every Saturday morning. It was there that I first decided to break our tradition of ignoring the fuzzy stone fruit and take a chance.
And life hasn’t quite been the same.
That first batch I bought from Harman Peaches and shared with my sister, who was visiting at the time. We let the fruits ripen on the kitchen counter for two days before blanching them—something I had never done before—so I could peel them with ease. The result is nothing short of a true gift of nature.
The peaches—Sweet Sues to be exact—were perfectly ripe, the skin coming off with slippery ease. The colors—golden yellow, orange, pink, coral—like a watercolor sunset.
And then there’s the flavor.
First there’s the juiciness. Every bite is awash with moisture that coats the tongue. Then the sweetness hits. So good it’s like drinking nectar. Then the note of tang—a hallmark of the yellow variety—at the end. It doesn’t get much better than this.
When I went back the next weekend to get another hit, I told a customer waiting in line these were “the best peaches I’ve ever had.” I stand by it.
In elementary school, we would eat those cups of peaches submerged in that weird ectoplasm. They were syrupy sweet and bright orange. These are so naturally good it’s hard to see the resemblance.
Last year at the beach, my brother-in-law and his wife introduced me to a stupid easy peach cobbler recipe (it’s also vegan!) to which I became borderline addicted. And even with how much I love desserts, these peaches are so good it feels like a waste to eat them in any form other than au naturel. Really, it would be a travesty.
When I get to eat things so naturally delicious, I often think about the first person who tried them. What did they think? Was their mind blown at the delicate sweetness? The juiciness? The softness of the flesh? Were they driven mad? Did they hoard the fruit for themselves?
Thankfully for us, the experience is just a quick drive away. Despite what Justin Bieber tells us, you don’t have to go all the way to Georgia to get it.
