Peaches voted #1

It almost seems wrong to say that I like peaches better than watermelon, but I think I do. Oh, but don’t get me wrong, I do love watermelon, a good one.  But the taste of peaches just gets all over my mouth!  And there’s only one seed….I especially like peaches warm, right off the fruit stand.  My mother, before the days of wet wipes, always traveled with a damp wash cloth in a sandwich bag in case there was a need.  With 3 children on vacation the damp the well-traveled wash cloth was always being passed around the backseat.   She’d refresh it each time we stopped.
It certainly came in handy when we stopped for fresh peaches down in lower Alabama or south Mississippi.  Produce stands were as plentiful as the produce itself along our route coming home from the beach.  We ate ours with the peeling on, after a good rub down with the damp cloth.  And soon we all had peach juice running down our arms. I remember those peaches being so very good.
A peach is a stone fruit; botanically speaking it’s called a drupe. Drupes range from almonds to peaches, including plums, cherries, dates, mangoes and apricots. Most in this category have a rather large single inedible, bitter center seed.  In the case of almonds and walnuts the nut itself is the seed, just edible. These are classified as nuts, though, because of their firm texture and high fat content as opposed to the softer flesh of the other fruits in this category.   You wouldn’t think that raspberries were in this group, but they are. Think about those hard, white seeds that crack when you chew or get stuck in your teeth.
The ways of peaches are many. Fresh, cobbler-ed, pickled, preserved, baked in pies, chopped up in salsas, sliced over homemade ice cream, frozen in ice cream, and warm and fuzzy in the back seat.

Hope everything is just peachy with you and yours this summer!