Yellow peach time

Please keep eating yellow peaches and ignore the interloper, the white peach. I think the flavour from a yellow peach is just amazing, it is the flavour of summer for me. A white peach is just too sweet, with none of the tang that makes a peach special. I want the juices that run down my chin if I choose to not cut up my peach, forcing me to eat it standing over the kitchen sink.

Peaches are certainly not convenience food. I like mine peeled and juicy-ripe. I know a peach is ripe if I can peel it without using a knife. The skin just pulls away in strips, it only takes a minute or two to peel a peach. You wouldn't want to put a peach in a lunch-box, it couldn't hold up to the banging. You also can't buy just any old peach, nope, you need to find a green-grocer who knows what temperature peaches should be stored at. If you ever get a mealy peach, that oh so awful mushy, mealy texture. Don't blame the peach, point the finger at improper storage temperatures. Or so I was told by my farmer, and he knew a lot more about these things than me.

Sure, white peaches unpeeled have a similar flavour to a peeled yellow peach, but it's still too mild, not tangy enough. I worry that everyone will forget the wonderfulness of the yellow peach, because yellow peaches have to be juicy ripe before they are worth eating, where you can eat an underripe white peach. But why would you want to?

So it's summertime now, head out to your local farmers market. Smell the peaches, they smell like a peach when they are ripe. Quite likely, you'll have to bring the peaches home and put them on the counter for a day or two so they fully ripen. Smell them daily, they'll start to get a bit softer, there will be a little give. A bruise or two might show itself, that's ok, just cut it off after you've peeled the peach. Then bite into little pieces of summery heaven. Yum!

Thanks to Priscilla1295 from Flickr for the great photo of the peaches.