Gina and the Giant Peaches

My late brother's peach tree is dragging the ground with peaches this year and last week I brought back several bags of not-quite-ripe peaches from my trip home.

I'll make a crisp, I thought. Easy.

For three days a cookie sheet and a pizza pan sat covered in ripening peaches on my dining room table, patiently waiting for time to turn them into the deliciously smelling peachy goodness that is summertime. I'd sit at my computer watching them ripen, encouraging them to be the best peaches they could be.

Give me a P! Give me an E! You guys will become the most delicious crisp on the planet. Gooooo peaches!

Last Thursday evening came around and I decided it was "go-time." With my super-secret peach peeling and slicing technique Carolyn taught me I figured it'd take me 30 minutes, max.

Riiiiight. In shocking news, I grossly underestimated the time it takes to peel and slice 900 pounds of peaches, even with kitchen ninja skillz. It took forever. As in, This-is-the-longest-I've-ever-been-in-my-kitchen forever.

Not to mention, peaches are weird. Their insides are all kinda... tentacle-y and fibrous around the pit. And red. Like some sorta peach blood. Plus those tentacle-y fibers cling to the pit for dear life. I must have jammed 40 pointy peach pit ends under my thumbnail digging those damn things out.

And do you have any idea what slippery little devils super ripe peaches are? I bet you don't. But let me assure you, I'd rather step on a banana peel than a ripe peach.

Halfway my epic skinning and slicing of one babillion peaches I was covered in gooey peach juice and sucking my sore thumb. It was peach freakin' bloodbath, people. Little chalk outlines of peaches everywhere. The cats were like, "Wtf is going on in here?!"

I needed help, and lots of it. Hmm... What would Martha Stewart do? Naturally, I decided she would call Carolyn, queen of the dark kitchen arts. I was totally calm. "Carolyn!!! What the eff am I going to do with all these peaches?!"

She was totally surprised to hear from me.

"I knew you were gonna call... Ok, do you have lemon juice? (crickets) Of course you don't have lemon juice. Do you have sugar? Ok, sprinkle sugar on them and put them in the freezer. Hope you like smoothies!"

Eventually I couldn't deal with it anymore and found myself halfway through a bottle of screw top wine (don't judge) when my schmoyfriend kicked in the door to rescue me, er rather, to rescue the peaches.

"Can I take charge here, is that ok? You seem overwhelmed."

Really. I seemed overwhelmed. Folks, I was drowning in peaches. So while I stood around getting drunk he sugared and bagged and pectin'd the peaches. I might be ignorant, but I'm resourceful in my choice of friends.

The next day I went to make my "crisp" and discovered my flour expired in 2008. How is that possible, how does flour expire?

But check this out, did you guys know that putting sugar on fruit creates some kind of natural fruity syrupy stuff? Like that deliciously gooey strawberry shortcut stuff only not high fructose corn syrup from a bag, but rather, natural delicious fruit gooey stuff... Yeah, FACT. It's pretty much a miracle of chemistry, fruit and sugar.

I should probably get my own cooking show.