I’m over at Simple Bites today, talking about peaches and other stone fruits.

I ordered four bushels of peaches this year, and two of nectarines. I’m always a little worried ahead of time, daunted by all the work I’m getting myself into. Then when the peaches show up, I get busy, and then when it’s all said and done, I’m just plain relieved and happy. It’s my annual peach ritual.

Come to think of it, it’s my summer ritual, too.

In honor of the peach, and a couple of her pit-y sisters, here are some recipes to make them shine.

Apricots: Apricot Pandowdy, Apricot Honey Almond Cake, Preserving (drying and canning)

Cherries: Roasted Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate, Sour Cherry Crostatas, Three Reds Fruit Crumble

Peaches: Canning, Peaches and Cream Ice Cream, Peach Tart

Please tell me I’m not the only one out there who compulsively buys strange/unusual/exotic ingredients. You don’t, eh? Well then, what about shoes? garden seeds? material? books? Come on, there’s gotta be something!

For me it’s food. I’m not out for big thrills, mind you. Live baby octopus and corn mold aren’t what I’m talking about. But the little box of Indian spices that came in the mail today is right down my happiness alley. Dried Curry Leaves, Kalonji, Black Mustard Seeds, get ready to party!

So often I, in a moment of passion, buy things I use only once, or, worse yet, not at all. Like the grape leaves I bought a year (or two?) ago and the block of hard cane sugar that’s been on my shelf for going on five years. Help, help me, Rhonda!

But then I land on something so supremely delightful (Prosciutto dahling, let’s elope) that it makes all my expensive/useless purchases totally worth it. (In my opinion, not Mr. Handsome’s, but he’s not the author of this here blog.)

You could say it’s a form of gambling, I suppose. An addiction to food discovery. Some might say I’m greedy, others would call me creative, and yet still others would say I’m an artist. I think I’m just a Curious George, minus the tail, when it comes to food.

Anyway, back to last night’s thrilling dinner.

Not that you knew I was talking about last night’s dinner before just now, but I was. So now you know. Anyway.

I made peas with prosciutto.

See, I was talking about dinner! I said, and I quote, “Prosciutto dahling, let’s elope.” So there.

Anyway, I had bought a few ounces of prosciutto to smoosh into dried dates with gorgonzola (one of my tailless C.G. Adventures) and had a few slices leftover. I’m not one to gussy up my veggies—a salt shaker and boiling water is usually all I need—but then Molly posted this pea recipe and I had the prosciutto…

It was worth it. Worth the five dollars for the meat and worth the heartache and suffering for the peas. (Well, maybe not the second part. Store bought peas aren’t as heinous as their icy green bean and corn counterparts.) The peas were all buttery and soft, and tossed with the wisps of salty ham—mm-mm good. Mr. Handsome had seconds (he’s not one to have seconds of vegetables); I had fourths.

This dish won’t be showing up on my table any old day—it’s way too fancy and expensive for that. But I do think it might have just earned rights to hang out next to the mashed potatoes and gravy come next Thanksgiving.

Peas with Prosciutto
Adapted from Molly’s blog Orangette

The recipe I’m posting here is more or less the same as Molly’s. However, I recommend, for the sake of pinching pennies, doubling the peas while keeping the prosciutto the same (increase the other ingredients accordingly).

2 cups (1 pound) peas, fresh or frozen
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup minced white onion
1 clove garlic, minced
salt
black pepper
2 ½ ounces prosciutto

Melt the butter in a pan, add the onion and garlic, and saute for several minutes—do not let the veggies brown. Add the peas and simmer for ten minutes, stirring every now and then. Tear the prosciutto into little pieces (do not stack and cut like I did—they stay stuck thataway) and add them to the pan. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Turn the heat off, lid, and allow to sit for another five minutes. Taste to correct seasonings. Serve warm.

One year ago: Counting Chicks
Two years ago: Red Beet Salad with Caramelized Onions and Feta

My day started off with me standing in our front yard by the half-pruned, skuzzy-looking apple tree with my camera around my neck, waiting to snap a picture of our phantom speed demon that terrorizes us most mornings at 7:13. I’ve never seen him, that’s how fast the dude (or dudette) is. Disappointingly enough, he didn’t show this morning, but I’m one tough cookie—I’ll try again tomorrow.

Not that I have any idea what I’ll do with the picture once I take it. Perhaps I’ll call the license number in to the cops, or maybe I’ll see that it’s the granny that lives down the road and thus reduce the fear/anger element. If that’s the case, I might get bold, flag her down, and have a pleasant little chat about whether or not she has any grandbabies and how she’d feel if they got squashed flat by some nincompoop.

As the sun rose, the kids trickled downstairs. The Baby Nickel was first.

He perched on a stool and read books—first short stories by Flannery O’Connor followed by The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz—while eating toast.

After the flurry of last week’s cleaning, I resolved to do more deep cleaning on a regular basis. I also committed to broadening my kids’ chore repertoires. So this morning, I hounded Miss Beccaboo on proper porch-sweeping etiquette, and I divided out the green bean snapping amongst the four sets of hands, mine not included. (Our bean crop is piddly-puny, thanks to that nasty drought.)

I instructed The Baby Nickel in the art of dusting baseboards, Yo-Yo the piano, and Sweetsie the chairs. I included The Baby Nickel when I doled out the laundry, giving him his own little pile of socks, undies, and hankies to hang.

As for me, I washed windows and stairs, dusted some embarrassingly infrequently dusted furniture, and blanched the beans.

While the kids ate their lunch of leftover chicken-corn-and-noodle soup, I snapped photos of my new favorite ice cream, scarfing bites in between camera clicks.

This stuff rocks, people. Like totally.

Since I got my electric ice cream maker, I have made more ice creams than I can count; at present, four different kinds reside in my freezer. While I’ve discovered some impressive recipes, I’ve made even more only so-so ice creams. Either I’m picky or I’m doing something wrong or a good recipe is hard to come by. (I like to think it’s the latter, or perhaps the former, but definitely not the middler.)

But this ice cream, wow. This ice cream is staying with me for life. The only problem is that it involves sweet cherries and I did not pick any sweet cherries when I went to the orchard, preferring instead to stuff my jars with the sour variety. So, I had to buy fresh sweet cherries from the grocery store, an excessive act (nine bucks for three pounds—ouch!) that was redeemed with the first bite of ice cream. (I have also made this with the cherries. It made me weak-kneed.)

This recipe taught me two new things:

1. How to roast cherries.

It’s simple, really. Toss the unpitted fruits with equal parts sugar and bourbon and bake at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes. Shazam!

2. How to get tender chocolate crunchies into homemade ice cream.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like chocolate chips in my ice cream. They create too much of a texture contrast—rock-hard crunch versus smooth cream. It hurts. Chopped-fine bar chocolate has the same painful result. Chopped candy bars, while softer, leave a waxy taste. But I have, once and for all, solved the chocolate-in-ice cream problem. Simply melt bar chocolate and then drizzle it in slowly during the last minute or two of churning. The chocolate freezes up and breaks into little, melt-in-your-mouth shards. Perfect.

My ice cream maker has an open top which enables sneak tasting, an art of which I am master. However, my mother was here while the ice cream was churning and she put me to shame. Every time I turned around, there she was, spoon in hand, a guilty look on her face. (My mother might possibly be the queen of ice cream. She recently purchased and ate 17 boxes of the stuff, though, I’m sure she’d like me to add, not all by herself.)

Roasted Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate
Adapted from The Craving Chronicles

This makes a large amount and maxed out my ice cream maker. Unless you have a larger machine or don’t mind a mess, don’t skip the strange steps at the end of the churning process.

The bourbon is said to be optional but I beg to differ.

40 sweet cherries (or a few less), stems removed, washed
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons bourbon
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
½ vanilla bean, split
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
pinch of salt
5 ounces 60% bar chocolate (not chips), chopped

For the cherries:
Toss the cherries, unpitted, with the 2 tablespoons sugar and bourbon and lay them out in a shallow baking dish. Bake at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes till bubbly and soft, stirring gently every few minutes. Keep a close eye on them so that the sugar doesn’t burn.

Once the cherries have cooled to room temperature, pit and quarter each cherry. Chill the cherries in their juices.

For the ice cream:
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the milk, 1 cup of the cream, the salt, the 3/4 cup sugar, and the vanilla bean (both the bean and the scraped-out seeds) till warm. (I accidentally boiled mine most vigorously for about 15 minutes while I wandered the house watering plants and talking on the phone and it didn’t hurt it a wink. Not that I recommend my methods. I’m just saying.) Lid and steep for 30 minutes.

Beat the egg yolks. Add some of the warm cream, whisking steadily, to temper the eggs. Add the tempered eggs to the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, whisking away all the while, till the mixture has thickened slightly and coats the back of a spoon.

Pour the custard through a strainer into a larger bowl. (Rinse off the vanilla bean, dry, and add it to a canister of sugar for vanilla sugar.) Add the other cup of cream. Chill the custard in the fridge.

To churn:
Pour the custard into your ice cream maker and churn.

While the ice cream is churning, melt the chocolate in the microwave. Then, heat it a little more till it is runny melted. You need to be able to pour the chocolate in a thin stream, and to do that the chocolate has to be hot.

Once the ice cream has finished churning, slowly drizzle the chocolate through the hole in the top. Then, stop the machine and remove an ample cup of ice cream.

Start the machine up again and add the cherries—the juices make the ice cream base blush up real purdy. Once the cherries are incorporated, turn the machine off and package the ice cream into freezer boxes (gently stirring in the ice cream that you removed) and freeze till solid.

Yield: About 1 ½ quarts of heaven.

Confession: In the course of writing this blog post, I opened the freezer not once, not twice, but three times. I wasn’t just looking, either.

One year ago: Zucchini Relish
Two years ago: Banana Coconut Bread