Peachy keen

For the first few years I lived here, I heralded a certain farm's peaches as the peach to beat at the Union Square Greenmarket.  In recent years, though, I've had a number of mealies and, though I love the farmers, I can't condone their stone fruit.

But one day, I decided to give Ted Blew's "Revolutionary" yellow peaches a try.  They looked fleshy, smelled fragrant, and were not picked over too vigorously by the pinching savages.  After all, Ted Blew is better known for his pork products, pepper selection, and potted herbs than for his fruit. 

Last year and this year, his peaches have stolen my heart.  The skin slips off with a gentle tug and the clingstone's flesh is smooth, dappled with rose, perfectly sweet-tart with a multi-note perfume.  Just to be sure, my roommate and I compared my old favorite with the new; Ted Blew's peaches came out on top, hands down. 

Last year, I managed to make individual cobblers with those peaches, which, though totally ripe, miraculously make it back to Brooklyn with minimal bruising.  But nothing beats peeled peach slices fresh off the stone.  These babies are NOTHING like those green softballs airmailed from South America.  More than almost any other fruit or vegetable, if you've never had a juicy peach picked ripe from a local tree, you've never really had a peach.  This heat is a bitch, but I'm thankful for the peaches of summer, and I'll take my blessings where I can get them.

Ted Blew
Union Square Greenmarket
Saturdays (he might be there other days too, I forget)
North side, in front of Petco
I think they were $3/lb., and worth every penny

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Best interview subject , from a NYTimes article on laser-printing on fruit:

Sticker-removal duty took Jean Lemeaux of Clarksville, Tex., half an hour one day last week.

"I was picking all the little stickers from the Piggly Wiggly off my plums and my avocado pears and my peaches," said Ms. Lemeaux, 76. "Then I had to make fruit salad out of the ones that got hurt when I took the stickers off, and then I had to wash the glue off the other ones before I put them in the fruit bowl."

"One time," she said, "I got up the next morning and looked in the mirror and there were two of them up in my hair."