Peaches

It's peach season in Tennessee, which means I spend a few weeks as a peach broker. My brother has an orchard full of incredible peaches, and I have dozens of repeat customers begging for them. In return, I get all the peaches we can eat and some to freeze. We've had peach cobbler, peach muffins, peach shakes and smoothies, and of course lots of just peaches. Here is this morning's peach muffin recipe, which is my favorite yet:

Peach Muffins

1/2 c. butter
3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 banana
1 c. flour
1/2 c. oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. plain yogurt (or vanilla)
1 c. fresh, diced peaches

Cream butter. Add sugar and beat until light. Add egg and banana and beat well. Add vanilla and yogurt and beat again. Add flour and baking powder and beat. Finally, stir in peaches. Drop by spoonful into muffin tin (I use liners). Bake at 400 for 20 min. Makes 12 muffins.

Peach season always makes me think of what might be my favorite poem by the poet Li-Young Lee. There are few poems that speak to me in such a place as this one does, the place where I was a girl raised in the midst of apples, peaches, apricots, plums, and cherries. That orchard within.

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

Hope you can find some locally grown peaches where you are. They are good for the soul.

~Linked up with Tasty Tuesday and Tuesdays Unwrapped