A Flat of Peaches

What to do with a flat of moldering, festering Kashiwase peaches?
Make cobbler? Yes.
Make popsicles? Definitely.
Use them as bait for your carniverous plant? Sure, why not!

For my birthday James got me this adorable Venus Flytrap. What better way to say I love you than a Venus Flytrap? I've been concerned whether it's getting enough to eat (typical me), so the other day I baited my trap with the peaches the fruit flies had their hearts set on:


Look at those peaches. They are disgusting. Oozing and weeping with sweet sugary juice. Most people would compost these, but not me. I put my superior peel-and-cut-the-fruit-while-it's-in-your-hand skill to use. Of course, I let the Flytrap have a go at the fruit flies first. Though it turns out it takes quite a bit of movement for the Venus Flytrap to snatch at its prey. After a day of waiting for the Flytrap to work its magic, I took over and just smacked one of the little bumbling flies in between my hands and fed it to the Flytrap manually. It snapped shut so fast I shouted.

After composting about a third of the flesh that was too bruised and battered to eat, I was left with about five cups of elegant white peaches. The first thing I made was popsicles, because lately I crave popsicles. It's not even that hot around here, but for some reason I find them so satisfying. Also, they are incredibly easy. So maybe I'm just lazy.

For these I was just going to puree ~2 cups of the flesh and then add a 1/4 cup of limeade that I had in the fridge, but as the blender was whirring away I slipped one of the slices from the bowl into my mouth and had a flash of genius as the subtle floral bouquet of white peach filled my mouth. Rose water! I had a bottle of this that we once bought intending to make lassi and then never did. I found it and added to the mixture about a tablespoon and then tasted. Pretty good, but white peaches aren't as high in sugars as yellow peaches so I added about three tablespoons of agave nectar. Simple syrup would work here too (just add a little less since it is sweeter), but again, I was feeling lazy, and when else am I going to use that agave nectar that Cathy gave me when she moved? Thanks, Cathy! Wish you were here to try one of these popsicles, because, man oh man, were they amazing. Better than the melon popsicles even, though not as nostalgic. I will post the peach cobbler I made another day.


White Peach, Rose Water, and Limeade Popsicle Recipe

Add to a blender or cuisinart, the following and blend till smooth:

~2 cups peeled and sliced white peaches
1 T rose water
1/4 C limeade
3 T agave nectar

Pour into molds or ice cube trays, reserving about 1/4" at the top to allow for expansion. Freeze for at least two hours.

Paletas de Melon

It is finally melon season at Happy Boy Farms and the customers are snatching them up left and right, so yesterday James was only able to bring home a single cantaloupe, which of all melons is his least favorite. But to me its musky sweet smell spells hot summer days wandering through cobblestone streets.

When I lived in Mexico I had a very routine life. As usual, most of my routine revolved around food. I didn't have a lot of money so I ate mostly at home, which as most single people know, it can get pretty hard to motivate oneself to eat healthy, much less eat at all, when it's just yourself you're cooking for. Yet I persisted and to start my day off right I would have coffee and granola with yogurt. By lunchtime I'd be prepping a salad. Since it's so hot in Mexico it is hard to have a lot of fresh produce. The heads of lettuce I would find in the grocery store were always wilty, but I would buy them anyway and crunch up my salad with cabbage, carrot, and pepper. I typically added canned tuna fish dressed up with lime, olive oil and a bit of red onion to my salad. I spent my afternoons opening and closing the fridge to discover that, yes, it still only had salad fixings and maybe a stack of tortillas.

Eventually my hunger drove me down the hill to town. One thing that I looked forward to (and still do when I get to visit) was my daily popsicle, called a paleta in spanish and only one dollar! The best friggin' dollar you ever spent. In Mexico the paleta is an art form and in practically every city you can find a paleteria, where there are paletas of most any flavor you can imagine. Hibiscus, guava, pineapple, pistachio, strawberry, yogurt...but my favorite of them all was melon. Melon, pronounced meh-lone. So refreshing, so cold and sweet, with small bits of fruit mixed in before frozen. I relished that popsicle. Only two other treats conjure up such exquisite, rhapsodic memories of my time in Mexico--palomitas con salsa (that's popcorn with Tapatio salsa drizzled over it) and adobada tacos. Deee-licious!

So when James presented the scorned cantaloupe, I knew exactly what I would be using that melon for: paletas de melon!

The possibilities for popsicles are endless when you really think about it. All you need is fruit, water, a blender, and a popsicle mold or an ice tray and sticks.

For these, I used one small cantaloupe, which made about 2 cups of puree, plus the reserved 1/4 of the melon I chopped into small pieces to mix in at the end. I added the juice of a lime for fun, but if you wanted you could just add about four tablespoons of water to thin it out before adding the melon chunks and pouring it into the molds. Depending on your freezer you could be in Mexico in about two hours.