Peach picking is the closest thing I’ve experienced to living in a technicolor 1960s movie. With a vibrant blue sky as the backdrop, Kevin lifted little April to his shoulders so she could reach the highest peaches. Katie went for the brightest low hanging fruit. (How do you describe the color of peaches without using the word ‘peach’)? The hum of a tractor the only sound in the distance, we walked up and down the rows of peach trees. ‘This one! Look–here’s one!’ they shouted.
After a picnic lunch and a stop at a local supermarket to buy pie crusts, we arrived home with an excited Katie and her sleepy little sister April. And, oh yeah–50 lbs of peaches. Kevin lined them up on every windowsill in the kitchen. An engineer by training, he immediately created some sort of shelving system by our largest windowsill. While Katie helped Kevin, I put April down for a nap.
As April slumbered upstairs, Katie and I got to work on peach pie (recipe below). I chopped up the peaches and she scooped them into the bowl. She used a little 1/4 cup so she would have more opportunity to count while filling up the bowl. (When yummy peaches are involved, it’s much more fun to count to 24 instead of 6, especially when you follow the ‘one for the bowl and one for me’ method of counting). Once the bowl was full, she dug her hands in and gently mixed up all of the ingredients.
We filled up the pie crusts and then topped it with the crumb mixture. Kaite learned the difference between the taste of brown sugar and white sugar. She likes both and kept licking her fingers. There is a very high amount of handwashing during pie making.
While we waited for the pies to bake, we ran through the sprinkler Kevin set up outside. The smell of sugar and peaches filled the air. It mixed with the smell of something burning. Turns out, we were a little over-zealous in filling up the crusts and it leaked over the sides, fell on the floor of the oven and immediately became singed and smoky. April is terrified of the fire alarm so we quickly turned on all the kitchen fans and opened the door. Crises averted and April continued her nap waking just in time to write stories about animals and then help out with ‘make your own’ pizza for dinner.
This pie was awesome. Delicious doesn’t even begin to describe how excellent it was. It was so good that the entire first pie was eaten that same day and the 2nd pie was eaten the next day. I’m happy to say that Kevin ate most of it and was so smitten by the pie goodness that he didn’t even bother putting it onto a plate. He just left the 
spoon in the pie and would keep taking bites every time he went into the kitchen. This is the same guy who didn’t eat my chocolate chip scones, or my chocolate chip oat cookies, or my homemade honey-wheat bread. He ate an entire pie.
Lessons learned:
-Kevin can eat an entire pie by himself–next time double the recipe so I can have leftovers too.
-A nice, full pie is so pleasing, but it tends to leak over the sides. Perhaps putting the pie plates on a cookie sheet would have helped.
-I added vanilla to the original recipe. There are few things to which I don’t add vanilla or chocolate chips. In this case, I thought the chips might be a bit too much and went with the extra shot of vanilla instead.
–I forgot to take a picture of the peach trees. How could I forget to take a picture of a peach hanging from a tree? Next time I do one of these shoots, I need to make a list ahead of time of every image I want to capture.
This recipe yields 2 pies:
Pie filling(adapted from Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook –assuming ‘new’ means 1996):
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
6 cups sliced peaches (6 to 8 medium)
1 tsp lemon juice
1-2 tbs of vanilla (depending if you or your 6 year-old is pouring it)
Pie crusts:
I used frozen-ready-made crusts for a few reasons–1) no one has invited me to their kitchen to teach me otherwise and 2) the goal of this effort was to work on my peach filling, not the crust
Crumble topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
Smoosh them all together and then break apart into bits and put on top of pie
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees
Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon in large bowl. Stir in peaches and lemon juice. Pour into pie crust. Top with bits of crumb topping.
Bake about 45 minutes. Cool in pie plate on wire rack.
