My 'Peachy' Brunch Plate

So, this week, my peach tree finally gave out it’s last bounty. The tree itself is odd and miss-shaped. It seems to be growing out of the foundation of our house and really needs to be cut down. However, it likes to yield a lovely amount of fruit; just enough to stay it’s execution.

I know absolutely nothing about keeping fruit trees. Last season, I asked my husband to pound a few fertilizer stakes into the ground around the tree because I had found them in the garden section of Walmart and they looked like a good idea. I’ve been told that a fruit tree bears well one year and then not the next. Last season wasn’t a good one so, this season was its’ turn to prove it’s worth. It did. We likely got a few hundred peaches off of it and they were lovely. I even had enough to share them, which is nice and often impressive to others. “Yes, yes, I grew these peaches. . .they’re off of my tree. . .” (Like I had anything to do with a tree planted by someone else, long before we moved in!) Anyway, what to do with the few we couldn’t eat out of hand?

When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother used to ‘do them down’. A familiar term to many that implies preparing the fruit in a way that makes them shelf stable for at least a decade. (Ha!) Sometimes it meant jam, sometimes conserve. In later years, it meant peeling, slicing and freezing. My mother’s favourite was conserve. She’d peel and slice peaches and add sugar and marachino cherries, bring a to a simmering boil and reduce slightly. It was glorious stuff and begged for fresh bread or scones.  

So, how might I improve upon that? How about a delicious caramelized peach concoction.

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