The peach stand outside Tyler is a folding table under a pop-up canopy on a farm road, with a hand-painted sign and a cash box, and the woman running it handed Rosie a peach nearly the size of her head before I'd even said hello. We bought half a bushel, about 25 pounds, for $32. Rosie ate hers in the van, in her car seat, and was sticky to the elbows by the time we pulled into Ron and Debbie's driveway.
We spent July 2 to 7 at Matt's parents' house in Tyler, about an hour and a half east of us. Matt took the week off, my preschool hours drop in July anyway, and Biscuit rode in the way back next to the cooler. Kristen and Avery drove out for the Fourth, so for two days there were nine of us at Debbie's table.
Debbie's kitchen
Cooking in someone else's kitchen is humbling, even after six years of cooking in other people's kitchens for a living. Debbie's is older than ours, with a deep white sink, a gas range whose back left burner runs hot, and a cast-iron skillet that has been seasoned since before Matt was born. It is also, and I say this with love, a kitchen with one sharp knife, and it's mine, because I packed it. Debbie raised an eyebrow when I unrolled it from its towel on Thursday night. By Saturday she was borrowing it.
The rule in that kitchen is simple: Debbie runs it and I'm the sous chef. I chop, I wash, I fetch things from the garden, and on one night out of five I cook. It's honestly a nice break.
Ron retired from teaching high school ag years ago, but he still gets up at six to walk the garden before the heat, and every morning he took Wyatt and Eli with him. They came back with squash, cucumbers, a bowl of okra and a few cherry tomatoes that Rosie insisted she'd picked. Debbie's big tomatoes were mostly finished. The July heat had split the last of them.
The tomatoes from Jacksonville
So on Friday Matt, the boys and I drove half an hour south to Jacksonville, which takes its tomatoes very seriously, and bought ten pounds at a farm stand for about $2.50 a pound. We ate them all week: sliced with salt and pepper at every supper, on burgers on the Fourth, and in tomato sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise for lunch, which is the only way Debbie will eat a tomato sandwich and, after this week, the only way I'll make one.
Debbie makes a tomato pie every July, and this year's came out of her oven on Monday. Matt said what he always says about tomato pie, which is "no thank you" with a face, and the rest of us ate his share. I bought extra tomatoes anyway. Some came home with us, and I have plans for them that he doesn't know about yet.
What we ate
- Thursday: Debbie's fried pork chops, fried okra from the garden, squash casserole and sliced tomatoes.
- Friday: my night. I brought a King Ranch chicken casserole from our freezer, and it went into Debbie's oven while she sat down for once. Cucumber and tomato salad on the side.
- Saturday, the Fourth: nine at the table. Matt and Ron grilled burgers and hot dogs on Ron's old charcoal grill, and Matt brought his smoke tube along just to show it off. Jacksonville tomatoes on everything, corn, watermelon, and homemade peach ice cream in Ron's electric ice cream maker. We watched the neighbors' fireworks from lawn chairs at the end of the driveway, and Rosie fell asleep in Avery's lap before the finale.
- Sunday: church with Ron and Debbie, then Debbie's fried chicken and a peach cobbler. Kristen and Avery headed home that evening.
- Monday: BLTs for supper with thick slices of Jacksonville tomato, Debbie's tomato pie, and the last of the cobbler.
The peaches, and my rookie mistake
I bought the peaches on Thursday, on the way in, which was a mistake in a week of 97-degree days. Peaches ripen fast in that heat, and by Sunday about a dozen had gone soft. Debbie turned those into the cobbler before I could feel too bad about it. The lesson for next year is simple: buy them on the way home, not the way in.
We ate peaches all week, sliced over cereal, cut up for Rosie, and straight over the sink with the juice running down to our elbows. The rest rode home on the van floor on Tuesday, with an AC vent aimed at them, and they've been finishing on the kitchen table ever since. This afternoon they go into the freezer, which is its own post.
As for money, Debbie wouldn't let us buy more than a couple of grocery runs. Our side for the week came to $171.51: $32 for the peaches, $25 for the tomatoes, $86.34 for the Fourth of July groceries, and $28.17 for milk, bread, bacon and lettuce on Monday. That's less than a normal week at home, and we came back with a freezer's worth of peaches waiting on the table.
The van smelled like peaches for three days. Biscuit spent the first morning home walking the backyard fence line, looking for Ron.
