Farmer’s Market Peaches! Cleft for Me!

Peaches are a sensual fruit.

Five types of peaches and nectarines displayed their sweet fruit on one stand at the farmers’ market. Yellow, rosy, a little fuzzy, clean, white flesh, golden yellow flesh.

I didn’t like peaches growing up in the Midwest. They were hard, apple-like fruits that arrived in early fall, or canned cling peaches in syrup, served in the school lunchroom.

I have retired to where they harvest fresh fruit, unlike fruit I have known. It seems a grand metaphor, to retire to where the sweetest fruit is harvested, but I will have it.

The peaches are too ripe, too easily bruised, too juicy, and too fragrant (fragrant?) to ship across the country. They were plucked from a tree, maybe yesterday, and trucked to our farmer’s market this morning from an orchard thirty miles away.

I brim with metaphors and similes. It is peachy keen. It’s all peaches and cream. What a peach of a day.

They are sensual fruit.

Nectarines have that deep cleft that reminds one of the perfect bum, the beloved getting out of the shower, bending to towel dry.

They are succulent fruit, cut around the center pit, or the sweet flesh sucked off the stone whole.

The eater drips.

I will make waffles, slice fresh peaches on top of the waffle, sprinkle with a little cinnamon and nutmeg, and douse the whole plate with maple syrup.

I bought enough peaches that I could make a peach pie, or maybe a cobbler. Choices, choices.

The height of juicy, sweet fruit has even driven ex-pats to a private supply chain, like the mango market.

Now I love a ripe mango.

But according to people who grew up in Pakistan and India, the mangoes we get in the United States are, but a poor imitation of the mangoes grown in Pakistan and India. I read a story about a private supply chain for people in the know for Pakistani mangoes, when in season.

Arrival alerts are exchanged on text messages. Buyers drive a couple hours to side roads by airport cargo bays to load their cases, to distribute mangoes to purchasing friends and neighbors.

I understand the rarefied memories of fruit from the homeland.

I have that memory for a pastry that I can’t get here, on the West Coast, but can order in a diner in North Dakota.

The Midwest has caramel rolls that are gooey, soft, and unlike any overpriced dry frosted cinnamon bun sold in quantity in the West Coast’s bakeries. I am not claiming they are healthy or elite. They are Gramma’s sticky buns, melt-in-your-mouth buttery bread topped by dripping, sugary caramel, and the inner coils sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. I will have one next month.

The anticipation and the memory may exacerbate reality. If one can’t get something easily, the effort required enhances the delight, the taste, and the longing.

I forget if I’m talking about food or love.

My advice is to retire where you can have both. Mix your metaphors. Enjoy your ripeness.