Summer Food.

So it’s seven o’clock, it’s still sunny out and I can’t wait to go outside and read my book, but I want to write something real quick first. I went to Kelowna last weekend for a cousin’s wedding celebration (garden party!) and in the midst of swimming, visiting and winery-ing, I had the time to buy a twenty pound box of peaches and ten pounds of cherries.

The drive home was stunning, the smell of peaches overpowered the car every time the roar of the wind got too much for us and we rolled up the windows – blam! Nothing like it.

But honestly, after sharing half the fruit with Kristopher’s parents, what are two people to do with ten pounds of peaches? It is truly a feat to try and eat that much fruit before it goes off... Basically, we ate peaches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s not that hard.

How do I eat them for dinner? Well I don’t just bite into it like an apple while I’m eating my barbeque. They go onto the grill as well! Just like anything else I cook like this, it’s just a bit of olive oil and some salt and pepper onto the halved and pitted peaches and on they go. Don’t be afraid to give them a good amount of tasty salt (try Maldon Sea Salt, I can eat it straight it’s that good), it will balance well with the sugars. While they get the char lines the insides get even sweeter and juicier than before they were cooked. I insist on eating them with grilled pork (which always goes well with cooked fruit, ever had it with apples?), and have also had them in a salad with arugula, lettuce and prosciutto.

Being that we bought them six days ago, I discovered tonight that a few had some extra and unwanted blue fuzz on them. Not wanting to lose even one, I peeled them (put an X on the opposite end from the stem, submerge in boiling hot water and then again in ice water and the peels will rub right off), sliced them and froze them – along with two freezer bags full of blueberries that I bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. I love buying mass amounts of fruit when it is so fresh and in season, and obviously hate to let even a little bit of it go off... Freezing the bounty while it’s perfectly fresh will allow you to enjoy it in the fall. The rain will be falling and you will be munching on an Okanagan peach.

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This afternoon I went shopping in Whole Foods, which is a major treat for me. That and H&M which I love equally, but that’s another story. I originally went into WF for their sausage selection, which is out of this world. I get excited about this sort of selection... With maybe ten or fifteen selections, how could a girl not? I got some spicy pork chorizo ones and on the way out, was sidetracked by the cheese selection, namely, the bocconcini. Thus sparked the beginnings of the another ultimate summer meal.

This came first:

Lemongrass soda. To die for... The company, called Dry Soda , also makes a rhubarb soda (among other equally amazing flavours)! I have a friend who is a buyer for Loblaws and had told me about these tasty drinks many moons ago, but I had yet to discover and see them for sale until today. It was worth the wait. I also love that the box recommends you to drink it out of a champagne flute and gives food pairings.

And perhaps you can see what came next right in the background of that photo...
The above mentioned bocconcini cheese, two mind numbingly delicious heirloom tomatoes (a yellow one with red hues, and a red one with dark green stripes, both about the size of a softball), and basil that I only recently planted but is growing fantastically. If you have yet to eat a salad with these ingredients in your lifetime, I urge you to do so as soon as possible. That is what tomatoes are supposed to taste like. Oh, it’s good.

And finally, came the last two grilled peaches and the chorizo sausages along with a Georgian baguette (they are just flat baguettes that are a bit chewier).

I made mini chorizo sandwiches, mopping up the juices from the sausages with the bread.

Oh it was a fine meal. Please do try it soon!

And now I shall retire to the patio to continue reading. And yes, I am reading Pamela Anderson’s fiction novel/attempted secret autobiography. Hey, I read everything I can get my hands so if the hot pink cover attracts me in the library stacks, I read it!