Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me

File this under the "something you think I would have done before but I never have" category. Doug bought a lot of peaches at the farmers market and has been hinting (every week) that boy wouldn't it be nice if we make a peach pie. 

We. 

Yinz know what that means... "Hey baby, make me a pie." 

He came home on Saturday with more than a dozen really nice peaches. They're delicious. And I kind of feel it is shabby to make them into a pie instead of eating them and enjoying them the way The Lord God intended. But because I'm going out of town, and if I didn't do it today well, they'd go bad. And that would be criminal. I made a pie.

But I've never made a peach pie. There are differing opinions online, but, the vast majority of people say you gotta peel the peaches or that's trash. So I googled that, and had some time around lunchtime to get to work (a miracle of luck, I must say).

The instructions taught me: 

First, you gotta blanch them.

Then, you gotta peel them.

And finally, you gotta get them in your pie crust and rock out. 

I've never once in my life blanched a fresh peach. Or seven. So this is cool, alright, okay, I'm doing something I've never done, in the middle of the work day, as my lunch hour. 

Tell me how working from home hurts the American Worker etc... whatever. I'm taking my lunch hour. And I am doing. Something new. 

Suck it, Malcolm Gladwell. 

Anyway. 

I chose 7 peaches from the bag, noting the tips from ole Betty Crocker said not to use any with bruises. All were minorly bruised but I figured that was no big deal. We're working with Nature over here. What do we expect?

I set up a large pot to boil and readied up a large bowl full of ice and water for an ice bath. Once the water was at a rolling boil, I placed the peaches in gently, and lowered the heat to a simmer. 

The instructions said give it 30 seconds. So I ate my sandwich while the timer was counting down. Once 30 seconds passed, I scooped the peaches out of the boiling water directly into the ice bath. The instructions didn't say how long to leave the peaches in the ice bath, so I figured I'd wait until the bulk of the ice was melted. 

That took a couple minutes. 

I scooped the peaches out of the bowl and made sure they were cool enough to handle, then transferred them onto the cutting board. I sat down in front of them,  not knowing what to expect. Was this going to be hard or easy? Would they come off in a single swipe? Should I use a paper towel and gently rub the peel/skin off? 

I picked one up and noticed that the peel had come away a little bit up at the stem, so I pulled at it. It slipped off nicely for a stretch, then I had to locate another spot where the peel was ready to go and it also cooperated. 

I found starting at the stem and just kind of pushing a little bit into the peach at the top, going around the stem, this created a nice opening to just start peeling down the sides. 

Betty Crocker's advice of not using bruised peaches became evident. I had a couple peaches with bruised spots, and some with invisible bruises, and the peel did not want to come away from those spots. 

I worked gently with a knife to nudge the peel away, trying not to mangle the peach.  

Overall, this was swift and smooth, and the peaches were beautiful. About 20 minutes total for this process. 

It was so cool to gently peel these skins off. I was amazed at how easy it was. 

I set the peaches aside to work for a little while, and returned to the kitchen between meetings to slice the peaches away from the stones.

All of the sliced peaches were tossed into the bowl with about 1/2 cup of sugar (I used real white sugar, not one of my substitutes. If I was putting this much effort into baking, well, it's going to be real), 1/4 cup of flour, a lot of cinnamon, large dash of lemon juice (from the bottle, we're out of lemons!) 

Mixing up the concoction, noticing the bright pink color of the "juice" all in the bowl. I didn't take any pictures of this because my hands were sticky from the slicing. 

I used store bought pie crusts. Don't give me shit for not making pie crusts from scratch! This is a lunchtime endeavour and I'm not feeding the queen of England. One pie crust into the bottom, and I did a complete hack job of a "lattice" style top crust. I was rushing at this point because I had a meeting in 10 minutes, and wanted to get this bad boy into the oven. 

Preheat to 400, baking sheet in the oven and pie on top (lest it bubble over and make a mess!) 

Go to meeting, and Geoff lowered the heat to 350 for me about 15 minutes into the baking. 

Baked the pie for 40 minutes, and had a meeting so I turned the oven off. The pie didn't burn, in fact, it came out perfectly and beautiful. 

Doug grilled chicken thighs so we had those on carb balance tortillas with shredded cheese. I made some sugar free vanilla ice cream with bourbon mixed in, and had it set in the fridge. 

Came out amazing. 

Thanks peaches! Digits below the picture of Doug's LARGE slice on the left, and mine on the right. With a lil'sprinkle of extra cinnamon.

digits

exercise: Dedicated 10+21; inside the house, as the thunderstorm was coming!

blood glucose:
9am: 191
7pm 186 (forgot to take a reading before dinner so it probably would have been lower if I did!)
11pm: 240 (see pie...) Wondering if taking the medication with dinner is too early, but bedtime is too late? maybe taking it at 8:30-9pm after eating at 7ish? is better? 

maybe not eating pie.

Food:
Water
Coffee
yellow plum
ham sandwich with tomato and mayo on 647 bread
peach
bits of peach
slivers of peach
3 chicken thighs in carb balance tortillas with spicy cheese
slice of pie with sugar free ice cream