For the past two months, I’ve been pes­ter­ing my farmer’s mar­ket friend Sharon, of Mead Orchards in Tivoli, NY, to sell me a bas­ket of peach sec­onds. I have fond mem­o­ries of the crazy week­end I spent a few years back mak­ing peach ice cream, jam, and pies in 100 degree heat after buy­ing a box of util­i­ty peach­es. Sharon brought my peach­es last Sat­ur­day, in the mid­dle of our recov­ery from a five-day pow­er out­age and flood­ed base­ment post-Hur­ri­cane Irene. There was lots to do — papers and box­es to throw away, an office to relo­cate, gro­cery shop­ping, and plen­ty of clean-up. And then there were my peach­es, two half-bushel box­es weigh­ing a total of about 50 pounds. I fig­ure 200 peach­es give or take. Unlike my oth­er chores, the peach­es need­ed my imme­di­ate atten­tion. Bat­tered and bruised from a cou­ple of hail storms, they weren’t going to last long. So I turned my back on my base­ment and got to work. Here’s what I made in the 48 hours before my peach­es spoiled:

  • 2 almond-peachtarts
  • 1 peach crum­ble
  • 8 pints of peach pre­serves
  • 9 pints of peach but­ter (in the crock­pot, a huge labor saver!)
  • Sev­er­al pounds of dried peach­es

We ate a few and my friend Alix took a dozen for her mom’s pick­led peach recipe. Now they’re gone. My base­ment isn’t, unfor­tu­nate­ly. And I’m plan­ning to ask Sharon for a bushel of apple sec­onds in a few weeks.