9.18.2010

Random Summer Fruit

(My first nectarine tart with cornmeal crust, 2010)

There's something in my nature that attempts recipes without having complete or correct ingredients in hand. I'd decided to try a little apricot vanilla tart with cornmeal crust (thank you to whoever gifted us with a Williams Sonoma cookbook for a wedding gift). Sure, the store had no apricots, and yes, I forgot the apricot preserves and maybe one or two other things. Never mind that, because I loved how my Nectarine-tart-with-strawberry-and-vanilla turned out on my somewhat-difficult-to-cut-cornmeal-crust. I had to bake it no matter what the recipe called for: I think it's that summer is clearly closing its curtain and I'm trying to enjoy every last sense of it.

As a tribute to the end of summer, I want to share with you the following excerp. It's a bit random (like my baking and md) and not about elusive apricots or dainty, thin-skinned nectarines, but a tribute to my favorite summer symbol of all: Peaches.

From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee




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.