Peaches

I have a peach tree that grew from a pit, and while it usually produces many peaches that are very tasty, I keep wondering if I should cut it down. In fact, once I did cut it down, but it grew back and I rewarded it for its determination to stay alive by not cutting it down again.

Why cut down a productive peach tree? The peaches are small, the size of plums, they have a tough skin that cracks as they grow, and the cracks encourage rot. In some years almost the whole crop will rot on the tree. Plus they are clingstone, so they do not separate well from the pit, making them hard to process. As the picture should indicate, they are visually unappealing, so I cannot even give them away.
This year the rot has not been bad so far, and it looks like it might be the most productive year ever for this tree. I have dozens of these peaches sitting on the table, and I am wondering what I can do with them. My answer for tonight was to cut them into pieces.
And then serve them with ice cream. What a simple but tasty recipe I have discovered!
Now if I can figure out what to do with the grapes. Last year the birds ate most of them. This year the birds have not found them. Yet.

The Magical Fruit

My garden is finally producing abundant beans. This year I did not plant enough in the sunnier part of the garden, so bean abundance has been a bit late. (Beans are so productive that they produce even in partial shade. Many garden vegetables do nothing at all in partial shade.)
Beans are one of the foods that were developed in the Americas. Other American-developed fruits and vegetables are tomatoes, corn (maize) including sweet corn, potatoes, squash and pumpkins, peanuts, and sweet potatoes. European diets were pretty boring before Columbus.

Green beans are best when picked young and tender. We prepare them by steaming them. Some people like them al dente; I do not. If steamed too long, they get mushy. When we have abundance, we have more beans than we can eat at one meal, and then I can eat them cold for lunch the next day. After many summers of fresh green beans, I have a hard time eating canned or frozen green beans. They are just so inferior to fresh beans.

If you let green beans ripen, you can harvest the seeds and used them as dried beans, which are an excellent source of protein. In fact, dried beans were once used as an example to illustrate the economic concept of inferior good, a good which people used less of as their incomes rose. As people got richer, they could afford meat, so they dropped dried beans from their diet.

Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit. Eat lots of vegetables and then you can survive many desserts.