Just bought excellent Georgia peaches so thought I would mention "The Peach Truck" in case you

W

wigs

Well-known member
live in the Midwest, but have not heard about it. The Peach Truck Tour travels through Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Michigan during Georgia's ripe peach season and sells the best peaches I've ever eaten since we moved to southern Indiana and away from the big fruit distribution centers up north.

The peaches I came home with yesterday (July 11) were picked from a Ft. Valley, Georgia, orchard on Monday, July 9. They are still a bit firm, but I currently have them spread all over the dining room table, and they will soften within 1 to 3 days and develop into the juiciest, most flavorful peaches ever. I weighed one single peach this morning, and it came in at 14.2 ounces!

The Peach Truck peaches surpass grocery store peaches because they are just hours off the tree when you eat them. Additionally, they’re picked when they’re ripe, and not a second before. Grocery store peaches can spend many, many days in distribution before making it to their final location, which is why their flavor and texture is so poor.

The Peach Truck(s) is/are currently delivering in mid and southern Indiana & the Kentucky area and will move into Ohio starting July 15, 2018. Here is where you can view this year's peach tour schedule==>

https://thepeachtruck.com/pages/tour

My first year buying from The Peach Truck was in 2016, when I split a 25-pound box with a friend. Last year I came home with 75 pounds of this tasty fruit and peeled, pitted, sliced & froze it all in order to crank out the 20 deep-dish peach pies I made for a crowd of 240 at a local musical event in November, 2017. (See recipe I used Posted to Thread #30244 on Apr 19, 2018.) This year a much cooler head prevailed, and I only bought 25 pounds!

With my 12.5 pounds in 2016 and the 75 pounds in 2017, there was not one bad peach in the entire 87.5 pounds. All ripened perfectly.

(There are also some excellent peach recipes with pictures at The Peach Truck recipe site listed below.)

Richard is in a prime spot to take advantage of The Peach Truck very soon, and hopefully, some of the rest of you will be able to reap the rewards of using this vendor in the days to come. Anyone living close to or in Nashville, Tennessee, can find these peaches at lots of different sales spots--there is a separate tour schedule listed for Nashville on their web site.

https://thepeachtruck.com/pages/about

 
That’s really nice, wish I was close. You are so right about store-bought. Noticed today the date

on the box of peaches from which I was choosing said packed on June 29...and today is two weeks later. They have been pretty good, just not like really fresh and tree ripened as you’re getting.

 
The good thing about being able to buy peaches from a stand here in the Carolinas

(actually better peaches than Georgia's!!) is that they aren't refrigerated which stops the ripening process and often they just become mealy.
Each week in July I buy peaches and tomatoes from a local vendor at our market and sell them for a dollar each to residents of the retirement home where we live. It comes out to just about "cost" and any thing over goes to our Community fund. It's fun to meet a lot of folks and usually the residents who buy can't get out to buy their own produce.
Last week the peaches had not even been washed of the fuzz and I was itching and itching for the hours I was "working"!!

 
Do you even remember apricots? They hit the dust about 30 years ago (okay maybe even 50) and

taste like cardboard now.

Here's a really easy and quick peach tart that is quite lovable. I make it on the spur of the moment and do the second bake as we are eating dinner.

Peach Kuchen
400 degrees

½ c. butter
1 ½ c. flour
1/4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
2 T. brown sugar

12 peach halves
3/4 c. brown sugar
cinnamon

1 c. heavy or sour cream
2 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs

Cut together first 5 ingredients and press into large pie pan. (Dough is very powdery.)

Arrange 12 peach halves on surface of dough. Pan may not be large enough to accommodate all peaches. Sprinkle fruit with cinnamon and sugar.

Bake 15 minutes at 400. Do not leave fruit sitting on pastry for long as the pastry becomes soggy.

Beat egg yolks lightly. Add cream. Pour over fruit and bake at 375 for 40 minutes.

It seems like a huge quantity but people always ask for seconds, even women.
Best fresh. Do not refrigerate unless necessary.
Good with half ricotta, strawberries, rhubarb and cinnamon.
This makes a lot of dough so I save part of it. The dough is powdery but less sinful with so little butter in it.
Do not bake the fruit in the dough and let it sit. It gets soggy.

The way I now do it:
I bake the pastry separately then mix the sour cream and 3/4 c. sugar together. I place the peaches on the pastry and pour the cream mix on for the second bake, sprinkling cinnamon on top. I actually prefer it this way. The pastry is better and the peaches cook sufficiently in the second stage.

 
Just for clarification, could you fix the ingredient list? I'm assuming the butter, flour, 3/4 cup

brown sugar and the baking powder go in the crust, but they are out of order. As for apricots, I can buy them here. They make an excellent crisp. I've never cared for them raw, but didn't taste one til I made this recipe a few years ago. I've already made it once this year. We love it.

http://www.eat.at/swap/forum/index.php?action=display&forumid=1&msgid=153010

 
I remember apricots: the Blenheim Royals (Royal apricots) that were smaller. . .

When you picked them off of the tree, they tasted like sweet sunshine and apricots. I liked them best with a just a tny little bit of green on them; it was easy to pick them this way, because this is how they liked to ripen.

Now we have those giant apricots that are so pretty but taste like pure insipid, generic fruit no matter whether they look ripe or not.

I was going to buy frozen apricots from a place up in Washington state BUT when I called and asked what variety they were it was not good. I cannot remember the name but when I looked up the varietal's description and read over the flavor profile. . . The flavor boiled down to a polite version of "it has little flavor".

Our trees died, none of the neighbors grow *any * fruit anymore, all of the neighborhood apricot trees died and were not replaced, and I cannot find good 'cots at the local farmers' markets.

A very sad state of affairs!

 
I can still get good apricots, there is a museum orchard here

Blenhiem apricots. Because they are part of our history, we used to be the largest producer. I used to have one of my yard but the birds won more than I did so I took it out. I’m thankful I can still get those.

 
Oh geez. I'm sorry. This is from a recipe card from 1975. Yes! It was in columns and I

goofed it up. It is straight now.

I really do prefer it with the brown sugar added to the cream rather than sprinkled on the peaches. And I have sometimes not baked the peaches on the crust and just added peaches and remaining ingredients for the second bake. 40 minutes is lots of time for the peaches to bake.

 
Someone online told me if I couldn’t find good peaches I should just use frozen ones

Clearly they don’t know how I feel about peaches.

The other day at the grocery store some lady asked me how to tell which peach was a good peach as I was picking them over and as an official old lady now I’m supposed to know these things. As I started to explain, I kept having to say “not like these” and finally realized I couldn’t find one good thing about the peaches sitting there.

 
I think I get depressed at the end of peach season. I miss my tree in the east but they are quite

wonderful here commercially. I always smell them. If the peach smells warm and summery and has lots of aroma, it's a good one.

We must be the only ones up this late.

 
DD was astonished when someone at the store asked why she was smelling the fruit.

She can't understand why people have no idea how to choose fruit. Mind you, I did ask advice about a sapote the other day, but then, I'd never bought one before.

 
Growing up, we had an apricot tree in our backyard, along with sour cherry trees.

My mom used to make the very best apricot jam, and a cherry-apricot jam that were out of this world!

My Dad built a tree house for me in the apricot tree, and my fiends and I used to use them for "food" while playing there. I ate so many apricots I am sorry to say I got sick of them and didn't eat fresh ones for years afterward.

At that point I was stuck with ones from the grocery store, which weren't even the same thing as the ones from the tree. I miss that tree!

 
We have a good peach growing area about 2 hours from here, but I have not had

any from there in a long time.

I got some very nice ones from Costco a few weeks ago, they were ripe, juicy, and very flavorful. Our Farmer's Market also has great ones in the summer.

 
My DD hopefully smells the melons year round, even though she knows they

will only be fragrant and tasty in the summer time. smileys/bigsmile.gif

 
I have oft thought that store should put up directions on how to choose fruit, BUT . . .

the *BING* thought came to me: If there were fruit-selection instructions in stores, it would seriously cut down on fruit sales!

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top