tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:13:27 +0000peachesdisappointingbouldersuccesslegends of eating101 peachesepicmetaphorsminneapolisnewsorganicovereatingpicturessupermarkettragictraveltwin citieswill it nog100 peachesbattleboards of tourismbruisedcafecharitycoffeecomplaintscookinggirlsmeatballsparodypreviewrecipiereviewrulessandwichsponsor a reviewsweetstim tamsunripe100 Peaches Projectnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)Blogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-5491111147532270497Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:26:00 +00002008-02-04T12:28:15.281-08:00Peaches In HistoryDid you know that basketball was first played with <a href=" baskets</a>?<br /><br />Found this thanks to Kate Beaton, who is my favorite person on the internet.2008/02/peaches-in-history.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-3543662414973636861Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:55:00 +00002008-02-03T10:56:47.360-08:00peaches24,000 Peaches<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="; alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Made outta peaches. From <a href=" Hunter</a>.2008/02/24000-peaches.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-3036265513701545046Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:52:00 +00002007-12-14T15:53:05.653-08:00coffeewill it nogWill Coffee Nog? Yes!Nog here goes in the place of cream, making your morning coffee a thick, frothy holiday-flavored beverage. The cinnamon and nutmeg flavors complement fresh coffee, and the nog thickens the broth up, making your morning coffee-nog a hearty treat. Nothing says Christmas-themed sweaters and holiday cheer like a big steaming glass of nog in the morning.2007/12/will-coffee-nog-yes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-1250661981682314706Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:34:00 +00002007-12-14T14:44:02.916-08:00will it nogNew Feature: Will It Nog?It's "the season" again - the season for egg nog. Dairy department employees the world over start stocking the shelves with the thick, creamy, liquid that is as mysterious as it is tasty. What the hell is it? Why does it mingle onto our supermarket shelves only in winter, to go mosey off once the Christmas trees are migrating out to their January dumpsters? It is pointless to ask these questions. They have no answer. It is simply the Rhythm of the universe, enshrined in tradition as surely as the movement of the stars or the passage of the seasons.<br /><br />To celebrate the glorious winter brew I'm taking this blog out of hiatus. We'll be starting a new section: <span style="font-style: italic;">Will it nog? </span>I'll test popular foodstuffs and ask the important question the MAINSTREAM MEDIA are afraid to ask: will it taste good with nog?<br /><br />Suggestions for foodstuffs can be left in the comments.2007/12/new-feature-will-it-nog.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-4509578614707636858Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:01:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:32.578-08:00100 peachesdisappointingepiclegends of eatingminneapolisnewspeachespicturessuccesstragicPeach # 100: Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall.After my dinner, I had the perfect idea for desert. It's a really simple recpie, and I haven't seen it anywhere before, so here you go, passed from generations of Mackies straight to you:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Ingredients<br /></div>1 peach<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Instructions<br /></div>Eat peach.<br /><br />I've had really great experiences with this recipe. People always ask me for it and I tell them I can't give away my secret. But there was a problem with this night's peach. This peach sucked.<br /><br />The skin felt rubbery, and when I bit in, I found a green and grainy peach, one with no flavor, edible only to the really desperate. It was par on course for the tasteless, over-priced peaches I've become used to in Minneapolis.<br /><br />But this wasn't just any peach. I looked at it, a gash in the fruit from where I'd bitten, a medallion of flesh dangling from a couple threads of skin. And I felt such a surge of bother and worry, the same sort of feeling I get when my room's not clean and I know there must be something I can do to set things right, only I didn't know what to do. Here I was, my hundredth peach in hand, and it sucked, the peach of all peaches, the culmination of a summer's worth of eating.<br /><br />And the feeling reminded me of how summer itself was slipping away. Now when I wake up and the mornings are gray as pencil shavings, I can't help but turn my sleepy mind towards the passing summer. And more than the heat or anything, I think about the sheer possibility in an American summer. The season whispers a promise both of laziness and growth. We get to slack off in our jobs, go on vacation, be free. But at the same time, we face a world wealthy with possibility and girls in swim suits. While we've toiled all winter, now we get to harvest, now we get to eat.<br /><br />But now - it's no longer summer. Winter will soon be here, the girls will put away their camisoles and bundle themselves up. We'll forget the barbeques, the beers; we'll forget the holidays; we'll watch the snow and wait until Christmas.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5111732003306658994" border="0" /></a><br />And here I am, with a bad peach.<br /><br />Look at the photo above. Notice how the flesh looks a bit dull. That's not a trick of the light - in real life, the peach looked almost ashen. And tasted that way. And look at my poor face! This was one bad peach.<br /><br />I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be able to blame somebody. But the worst part was that I couldn't do any of that. I could only sit there, feeling like I had lost out, that I had finally gotten invited to the biggest, coolest party ever and I'd left at two or three in the morning after hanging out awkwardly on the sidelines, knowing that I was out of place - that I didn't belong.<br /><br />So that's it, my hundredth peach. A success of sort.<br /><br />So keep your eyes open because soon I'll be posting a little peach retrospective, and give some clues about what will happen to this blog now that the peach project is finished. And thanks for sticking with me for this long!2007/09/peach-100-peaches-in-summertime-apples.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-2339729279021418311Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:10:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:32.781-08:00peachespreviewPeach # 100: Preview?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5111276756627841042" border="0" /></a>Is this Peach 100? I don't know. I thought it might be. It sat in its paper bag for a day, two days, and today I reached in to touch it. The flesh felt almost elastic, the skin had a couple unsightly discolorations to it - and worst of all - the peach had no smell. I've found that fragrence is the most reliable measure of quality in a peach. A peach that you can't smell when you stick your nose right up to the skin usually isn't a good peach. So now I'm worried. I don't want this peach to be horrible. I want it to be a good peach. So maybe tonight, after work, I'll go to the produce asile and search for a new peach. Or maybe I'll bit the bullet and realize, hey I'm trying to get peaches in mid-September. Of course they'll suck. Even if it is the ultimate peach, the crowning piece of stone-fruit in my peach-blogging empire.2007/09/peach-100-preview.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-1696277134662380597Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:28:00 +00002007-09-10T15:36:17.408-07:00legends of eatingsuccesssupermarketThe Wedge: Alright In My BooksIf you've been following this blog closely, you'll have noticed that I've been molested by some really truly bad peaches recently. The past two batches - both bought from the same supermarket - turned out brown, mealy, and just about as rancid as you could imagine, every single one of them. I ate a lot of bad peaches, which for me - well, really puts me in a bad mood. It's like I've been on bad date after bad date after bad date - so many that I now don't know what a good date, or, er, a good peach looks like! (Got tangled up in metaphors for a second there, sorry!)<br /><br />So I went down to the offending supermarket today, the Wedge. The Wedge is an upscale hippy-de-doo-dah place abou a block away from my house. I approached the customer service desk with a bit of hesitation, but once I told them my story, they were really nice and understanding - they said they'd gotten a lot of similar complaints and had changed supplier. They weighed up the number of peaches we I'd bought and gave me a full refund. Which is nice. I mean, it sure as hell doesn't make up for the awful peaches I forced into my gastric system, but it's something. I picked up some victuals and a block of chocolate for my roomie, because sometimes it's just nice to have chocholate given to you at inopportune times.<br /><br />I nearly bought a new batch of peaches, too - but I stopped myself. The next peach I eat will be that special number 100. And while the people at the Wedge assured me that they'd switched suppliers, I'm not going to run the risk of eating another bad peach. Not again.2007/09/wedge-alright-in-my-books.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-2409010247358538645Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:51:00 +00002007-09-09T20:06:23.584-07:00101 peachescomplaintsdisappointingtwin citiesPeaches #s 96-99: Same Old Song And I Sure Don't Like The TuneSo here's the tune: I get a bunch of peaches, wait until they seem ripe. I wait until they look like your usual tasty peach: the flesh firm, but the skin has a bit of give to it. Then I find the inside of the peach is the worst possible peach-inside you can imagine. The word to remember is grainy. The flesh is often deep red and even gray. They taste, these peaches, nastier than any other peach I have eaten in my entire life. One peculiar phenomena - their skin breaks easily, like wet paper. They are disappointing, icky peaches - peaches from hell.<br /><br />The last twenty or so peaches I've had have been like this. Now, it may be that the peaches in Minneapolis are horrible. It may be that the growing season is ending and so I'm eating the worst of the corp. But I also bought every single one of these peaches from a local organic grocery store. This particular grocery store, The Wedge, is a hip and pricey cooperative a block away from my house. Tomorrow, in investigative peach-blogger fashion, I'll go down to the customer service desk and talk to them about their horrible peaches and try to find out where the come from and why they're more nasty than peachy. I mean, there are other peach lovers out there who have been burned by this batch, and someone needs to stand up for them. Expect citizen-peach-journalism at its finest.<br /><br />I'll also head down to another grocery store and find the best looking peach I can find. It will be the last peach of the season. I mean really, I love peaches more than any other food. But I haven't eaten an orange this summer, or strawberries, or even an apple. I'm looking forward to some variety!<br /><br />If anybody out there has any ideas of how I can celebrate this legendary peach, or record it, drop it in the comments box. This might also be a good time to say hello.<br /><br />So in the next couple of days keep a look-out for peach 100. It'll be a grand affair. I'm thinking fireworks, live videoblogging, excessive use of internet thesauruses, pictures, flash animations, the whole works. I will leave no gimmick unturned in recording the 100th peach. That's what you can expect from this, the clearinghouse for peach-blogging news.2007/09/peaches-s-96-99-same-old-song-and-i.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-8797673904474384221Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:16:00 +00002007-09-07T14:22:06.268-07:00newspeachesPecach Contraband<a href="; just in from <a href=" /><br />A Massachusetts State Senator and his family were held up by boarder security. Why? Were they carrying pudding? did they refuse to take off their shoes? were they taking illegal immigrants in their suitcases?<br /><br />No. Peaches.<br /><br />His daughter was carrying three peaches.<br /><br />Their passports were taken and they were given a three hundred dollar fine.<br /><br />That 100 dollars a peach.<br /><br />I hope they were worth it!2007/09/pecach-contraband.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-5568624182163262758Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:54:00 +00002007-09-06T20:04:42.714-07:00disappointingepicpeachestragicPeaches #s 89-95: The Great Peach Massacre of September, 2007Oh, my friends I write today a broken and desperate man: my dreams are shattered, my cities in ruins, life - which was once such a sweet symphony - is now nothing but a low, depressed drone. I do not know how it came to this, how I have been so reduced!<br /><br />The thing is, I ate peaches today.<br /><br />They were the worst batch of peaches I had in my life.<br /><br />Every single one of them was grainy, near putrid mess of guck. They should not be called peaches. They certainly should not have been sold to me. They were dark red and sloppy. They were unsweet and left a horrible residue on my mouth, not a lot different from how your palate feels after you've just vomited.<br /><br />Five peaches left. And this, this is what I get for dawdling and forcing myself to gorge on the last of the year's crop. I get the worst peaches in the universe.<br /><br />I can't even explain to you how bad these peaches were. They didn't taste like peaches - the best of them didn't taste like anything, at all more than soft guck. But they were so bad, towards the end I was almost thankful. These peaches, the good ones, were so bad that I would write angry angry blog posts about them in the past. Now. Well, the worst of them... I think, literally, I might be sick.<br /><br />I am actually really upset. If you were waiting for a time to go out and buy me chocolates or anything, now would be it.<br /><br />I hope that I eat one more good peach before the end. Just one is all I'm asking.2007/09/peaches-s-89-95-great-peach-massacre-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-6500094639168660322Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:05:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:32.991-08:00disappointingpeachesPeaches #s 87-88: Bad Omens<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5106762144256129762" border="0" /></a><br />Image from <a href=" Ambiguous</a>' Flickr page.<br /></div><br />In preparation for the final peach stretch I got myself a huge bag of peaches, put them in an out-of-the-way place so they could ripen, and warned my roommate (who is very nice by the way) not to touch them on pain of a slow death. Last night, getting more and more excited about eating the peach 100, I checked the newest batch for any that felt ripe enough to be edible. To my surprise I found two that were perfect. Just the right amount of softness, and I could catch a heady fragrance to them when I sniffed. So I took these two peaches to my room for an after-dinner snack.<br /><br />The first peach was unpalatable and, worse, grainy. I've only had one or two peaches in the past 86 that have been grainy, and it's the absolute worst thing a peach can do. It's like a peach getting into death metal. Eating a grainy peach is like eating a bag of slimy sand. I started spitting and didn't stop spitting until I couldn't taste the bad peach anymore.<br /><br />So number 87 sucked. There was always 88.<br /><br />But this peach was even worse! It, too was grainy. And what made it even more horrible was that it tasted okay - it tasted, for all intents and purposes, like a real peach. I could tell that if it hadn't gone all bad on me it might've been a decent peach. But no such luck.<br /><br />I wonder if this means that, this late in the growing season, I'll have nothing but bad peaches until I reach the very end. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.2007/09/peaches-s-87-88-bad-omens.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-1383668662832926889Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:59:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:33.280-08:00cafedisappointingreviewsandwichThe Truth About Cafe Food<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5106040344937265874" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Photo from <a href=" Lunar</a>'s Flickr page.<br /></div><br />I've just taken my brekkie at a local caffeine-hawkery called the Boiler Room, and I have come up with a new rule for myself: never eat in a cafe, or if you do end up eating in a cafe - you'd better have a good excuse. Cafes are for coffee, and flirting, and flirting over coffee, and maybe wifi access, and even perhaps flirting about wifi. But they are not places to have lunch, if you want anything more substantial than a stale bran muffin.<br /><br />I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a large coffee. The sandwich amounted to three or four slices of ham, a little cheese, and some spicy mustard melted together all quirkily on a waffle iron. A waffle iron! That's all fine and dandy. But with a price-tag over five dollars, the place should really throw some bougie thing on there to fool me that I might possibly be getting my money's worth - like a sprig of fucking parsley, maybe, or a side-dish that's a little more interesting than stale potato chips. Hasn't the Boiler Room ever heard of goat's cheese? Or arugula? I think that if you're going to rip me off, you can at least put in a good-faith-effort to gussy the dish up so I don't feel like a complete chump. All up my breakfast came to over seven dollars. For that price, if I went to a decent greasy spoon, I could have ordered enough eggs to send me into a coma. I've had better food cooked by hungover high-school students.<br /><br />The menu at the Boiler Room is less focused on food and more an assholey attempt at twee gimmickry. Their specialty is eggspresso! It's eggs cooked on an espresso machine! (Geddit?) And instead of bacon or ham they offer - get this! - they have spam! How hilarious! Everyone knows that spam is not even legally classifiable as food and nobody would ever want to eat it who's in their right mind! This cafe is so fucking ironic and cool for serving it!<br /><br />Look, irony might be a cool conceit when you're hanging out at your indie art openings oggling the pretty girls or when you're thinking about what to get your latest face tattoo ("A celtic symbol? Or maybe a 1980s pixelated video-game character?"). But I don't want ironic food. I want something that tastes good. Preferably, I want a dish that surprises me, that overcomes my expectations, that is served with creativity and flash. Whatever you do, don't make my food <span style="font-style: italic;">cool</span>. Or if you make it cool, at least make it taste good, or look good, or have some quality to it above-and-beyond coolness.<br /><br />But don't give me spam and then charge me over five dollars for that spam because you're creative and edgy. Bad food - even when it preciously admits that it's bad food - is still bad food.2007/09/truth-about-cafe-food.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-4349578470401681433Sun, 02 Sep 2007 17:32:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:33.411-08:00boards of tourismepicminneapolispeachesPeach # 86: Epic Peach<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105664891781151426" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I was sitting on the floor of my new apartment yesterday, finishing off a pretty massive peach gorge. I was eating with a sense of purpose. Every pit I threw into the garbage I was one step closer. Every bite I took I bit closer - to triumph.<br /><br />But the peaches that I was eating, well, they were not terribly triumphant. To say the least.<br /><br />Here's a sad fact that the Twin Cities Tourism Board will not tell you when you're planning a trip here: I haven't yet eaten a good peach here. I'm happy when I eat a peach and it doesn't make me want to die. And that's rare enough. Maybe it's getting too late in the season, or maybe it's just that the Minnesota peaches suck. I don't know. But I was sitting on my floor yesterday, finishing up a nice batch of five peaches, when I realized that I hadn't really enjoyed any of them. But then again, I'm getting close to my goal.<br /><br />So here's the question I'm going to pose to you guys, and I'll seriously follow the best one: WHAT SHOULD I DO FOR MY FINAL PEACH? Should I have a party? Should I invite people over for dinner? Should I do it naked? At work? While swimming? Should I do it in a boat? Would I could I in a moat? These questions are important. Help me answer them.2007/09/peach-86-epic-peach.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-8664133052585238346Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:58:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:33.616-08:00charitydisappointingmetaphorspeachesPeach # 81: A Helping Peach<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105087923054475938" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Photo from <a href=" Romans</a>' Flickr page.<br /></div><br />It was a day scraped from the bottom of the barrel of hot August days, gritty and lazy. I decided to beat the malaise by taking a walk down to a nearby lake, dribbling along in the water for a while, and having a snack of peaches after I was done.<br /><br />I haven't had too many good peaches lately. Most have been so bad that they're almost bitter, and when I've chanced on a good peach, it's never been delicious, only edible - which is a change, certainly, but nothing to jump up and down and scream about. But that day, in the last of the August heat, I knew that I was going to have a good peach. I had to - everything else was perfect, so I was going to have a good peach.<br /><br />On my way to the lake I saw a homeless man standing in the middle of the street holding a cardboard sign up to passing drivers. I turned away and didn't bother to read what the sign said. It was hot out,r andin the middle of the busy street your atmosphere was a thick soup of charred exhaust fumes and mingling with the ozone of rush-hour-angry traffic. The man had a modern prosthetic leg and an overgrown soul-tash. He looked like he could have stumbled out the back door of any college dorm or frat house, ready to make an inappropriate joke about a girl's breasts or sing along to a 311 song desperately out of tune, but then had a couple too many pitchers and somehow gotten lost for a couple days and fallen on some hard times. But here he was, missing a leg, begging on the street. They must have been <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> hard time.<br /><br />I usually don't give anything to homeless people for a simple reason: I'm so poor myself I never have spare change. But something about this guy touched me. I had to give him something. So I handed him a peach. He smiled, revealing decayed stumps of teeth.<br /><br />And then after my swim, when I was laid out on my bath-towel, a good book cracked open across my bare chest, mottled sunlight falling on me - in as picturesque position you could hope for, is what I'm saying - I took a bite of my eighty-first peach. It was another disappointment: chalky, and so bitter it almost made me pucker. I spat the rest of it out into the trash can and didn't bother to even try to eat the rest of the peach. But then, as I was settling back on my towel to peer through another chapter or two, I realized: that homeless guy probably doesn't have the luxury of spitting out his bad peaches. Which is sad. It's sad if life makes you eat a bad peach.<br /><br />Last night I devoured a burrito at a bus-stop on my way to say goodbye to a friend who's moving country today. A couple minutes after the burrito had been masticated and deposited in my stomach I realized that I hadn't spent the time to actually taste it. I lingered, then, over my memory of that burrito - I recognized that the salsa had an overpowering oniony taste to it, that the flour tortilla was too soft, I felt the chicken against my palate again, sweet and soft - I tasted the burrito again, but really tasted it, and it felt like I was tasting it for the first time.<br /><br />There can be so much beauty in eating. But when we're so poor that we survive only on cans of tuna or animal crackers, eating can be a flat annoyance, on the same level as a bad cough that creeps up on you when you're not thinking about it. So I think it is one of the better comforts in life to be able to be picky about your food, to be able to savor it, love it, and when the time comes - to spit it out if it sucks.2007/08/peach-81-helping-peach.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-7306128461531790888Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:02:00 +00002007-08-29T20:04:39.169-07:00peachesDesecration!!!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="; alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a href=" wasps. </a>Via <a href=";.2007/08/desecration.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-662099218679291338Fri, 24 Aug 2007 02:44:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:33.785-08:00101 peachessupermarketA Peachy Meeting<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5102092900625054338" border="0" /></a>Three peach lovers stood around the peach-pile at a supermarket. They circled the fruit, squeezing them and then only occasionally lifting them to their nose to take in a deep whiff at which point they would inevitably put the fruit back and look for riper prey.<br /><br />“Have you had these peaches?” One of the peach-lovers asked.<br /><br />“From Colorado? They’re good.” The second chimed in.<br /><br />“A bit expensive,” number one said. “But they’re out of the California peaches.”<br /><br />“I was just in Colorado,” the third piped up. “The peaches there were fantastic.”<br /><br />The three went back to selecting their fruit in silence for a moment. The first peacher sniffed a peach, and for a moment it looked like she would put it in her plastic bag, but she hesitated, sniffed again, and then put it back in the pile with a bit of disdain. “Not ripe,” she said.<br /><br />“Didn’t think they had peaches in Colorado,” the second said.<br /><br />The third nodded. “They grow good peaches up there, the Western slope.”<br /><br />This was serious business, and another thirty seconds or so before any of them broke the silence of their work to talk.<br /><br />“It’s just so hard,” the third stuttered, “because when you eat a bad peach.”<br /><br />“Yeah,” the first peach lover said, “the peach, among all fruits, is the one that is most temperamental. When you eat a bad peach…”<br /><br />The second peach-aficionado picked up the thread: “It is like you have lost your job. A good one.” But she just shook her head and, in a sudden impulse, put another peach in her plastic produce bag after only barely sniffing it.<br /><br />“A good peach,” the third said, “then it’s like nothing else, you can’t believe it.”<br /><br />And with that, they returned to their task.2007/08/peachy-meeting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-4356138730376621276Sun, 19 Aug 2007 01:13:00 +00002007-08-19T08:47:59.627-07:00Peach # 66: This Is What It's All AboutThere was a single peach left in the glass bowl propped amid the clutter of my desk, and the peach - swelling, round, with its burnt red skin touched in places with beams with sunset yellow - reminded me of what this peach project was all about. Instead of going straight up to the peach and gobbling it down, knowing that it would be peach number 66, I instead just looked at it.<br /><br />Then I took slow, calm bites, watching the juice swell from the exposed flesh, bead, and then fall down the peach's skin. I tore off bites of peach and looked at the texture of the flesh, how it looked like fabric, almost. And then I slid them into my mouth.<br /><br />And it was a good peach. But maybe one of the things about eating a peach that I've forgotten about is that a peach can be good or bad, sure - but it's up to you when you eat the damned thing to realize that what you're eating is actually tasty. What I'm talking about is tasting the peach actively, energetically, felling your mouth wrap around each and every bite. That a good peach eaten badly will not be a good peach; and likewise? would a bad peach eaten well be a good peach?2007/08/peach-66-this-is-what-its-all-about.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-4728036120233640711Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:30:00 +00002007-08-16T19:12:48.157-07:00disappointingpeachestwin citiesPeach # 61: Morning PeachI wanted to start the morning right. So, finding that a couple of my peaches had ripened, I thought to supplement my breakfast with some nice stone-fruit. But, just a couple feet outside my door I bit into this - only my second peach in the Twin Cities - and found it unripe, sour, and inedible. Which meant that I held the damned half-bitten thing in my hand for a couple blocks, embarassed, until I could find a trashcan. And what's worse, the taste of it would not leave my mouth until I basically gargled with coffee, so I spent the entire bus-ride to work with the nasty peach juices marinating my tongue.<br /><br />Now, a lot of my friends think I'm a bit wimpy for counting these horrible peaches in my peach-tally. They think that, in the interest of peach-ography, that I should eat the whole damned thing. But I can't imagine that. I have nothing but pity for people who, on eating a nasty peach, think that they have to finish it. If I did, then I would just vomit. Everywhere.<br /><br />The Twin Cities peaches suck. I don't know, maybe it's the hot weather, or my house, of something, but my peaches go from being unripe inedible hard things to rotten inedible muhsy messes without ever lingering in-between for an hour to actually be tasty ripe peaches. I'm getting fed up. So far I've eaten two bad peaches, and thrown out seven rotten peaches. This has to end. Now.2007/08/peach-61-morning-peach.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-84737632636876921Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:14:00 +00002007-08-11T11:19:32.118-07:00Too Many Vietnamese Places!Seriously. The Corner near my house has not one, not two, but three Vietnamese places on it. It's crazy! I wonder if the owner's are all friends and play cards together, swapping economical recipes, or whether they all hate each other, or simply think that having three Vietnamese places on one corner is just, you know, normal.2007/08/too-many-vietnamese-places.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-7715160602556875342Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:22:00 +00002007-08-10T14:16:37.164-07:00And Then There Were NoneSo this, my most recent haul of peaches - sucked. Every time I looked at the pile of peaches, every single peach was still unripe. Except, that is, for the one peach that was - inevitably - rotten. And this morning I had one peach left. was going to eat it on my way to work and write about how wonderful it is to eat a peach first thing in the morning, on your way to work, and how it made your entire day wonderful. But I couldn't. Because guess what? when I went downstairs I found the peach - which was completely unripe yesterday - covered in nasty mold. This means, out of a batch of five peaches, I ate one peach which sucked and threw away four. This, my loyal peach-readers, does not bode well for Minnesota's peach haul. Neither does it bode well for my peach project. I have, what? Forty peaches to munch on before the end of the season, right? And not much season left.<br /><br />This means it's time for some serious peach-eating.2007/08/and-then-there-were-none.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-4807342404583946455Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:09:00 +00002007-08-07T18:19:41.840-07:00disappointingmetaphorspeachesPeach # 60: DO NOT WANTThings take on a certain delicacy when you're a newcomer. There is so much unknown that anything from getting a bite to eat to your first day at work can feel like a discovery; and so, after a while you are tired of the new discoveries, and you just want something whose dimensions are familiar. Because you do not need much delicacy when dealing with familiar things. You can, you know, let it all hang out.<br /><br />And then at the same time, you have days full of firsts. Your first breakfast in the new place, your first newspaper - your first peach.<br /><br />I ate my first peach of the Twin Cities in the pristine kitchen of the Utne offices, as part of an extended snack that covered for my lunch. I had bought five peaches from the local hippy grocers, but one had not survived the car-ride home, so I picked the softest, ripest peach from the bunch, put it in a plastic bag with the rest of my meager lunch and headed out.<br /><br />I first cut out the bruises and then took my first bite, nervous, for one, because it was a peach; also nervous because I'm new to the office and feel - quite rightly - that I am acting the proper part of an awkward but cheerful intern. I was also kinda hoping that my peach obsession had filtered around the office and someone would come up to me and say: Oh wow, you are eating a peach, how is it? and I would get to act authoritative, like a real blogger.<br /><br />The peach tasted fine. It was sweet, but with an almost bitter aftertaste. The problem was that the peach was incredibly grainy. It had the consistency of mishandled Styrofoam. I tried to continue eating the poor peach, but I just couldn't do it, and so I threw the offending stonefruit half-eaten into the trash.<br /><br />But what does this say for my life in the Twin Cities? I am trying my best, this time around, to be very open and social - to have, frankly, a peachy time. But it's hard, especially since these first couple days afford me a whole bag of excuses why tonight I can't go out, why today I can do a little bit less than I want to. I hope that this does not become a metaphor.2007/08/peach-60-do-not-want.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-8621305592865280004Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:40:00 +00002007-08-06T17:41:10.530-07:00peachesPeaches # 54-59: Not As Bad As I Thought. Not Bad At All.So after those horrible, soul crushing peaches I gave a small shudder whenever I passed the fruit bowl and tried to ignore the batch of peaches as best I could. But my grandma, watchful as she is, kept on reminding me that the peaches were getting riper and riper and that soon they wouldn’t be good anymore.<br /><br />Well. The last ones could never be good. But I was stuck. I had to eat them sometime. The surprising thing was that they were good. Every single peach was good. And I’m not saying that they were okay, or that they were good compared with the last couple of peaches – I’m saying they were some damned good peaches.<br /><br />The first peach of this batch I ate and kept on telling myself that it was a bad peach, too mushy, almost disintegrating in my mouth. But then, about halfway through, I realized that I was just being squeamish, and the peach was nicely ripe, if a bit soft around the skin.2007/08/peaches-54-59-not-as-bad-as-i-thought.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-3651308728008955238Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:17:00 +00002007-08-04T13:28:20.235-07:00disappointingpeachestravelPeaches # 52 and 53: MONSTER PEACHMy grandma, whose tastebuds have been napalmed from a whole life of cigarettes, told me that the peaches she’s been getting in Florida this summer have been really really amazing. I went and believed her, because I like to believe in amazing peaches, and so as soon as I landed in Florida I scurried over to the local supermarket’s produce section to see what I could see. I mean, I’m staying with my grandmother, in a place with cable TV and no internet, so I was expecting to do nothing but eat. And being a peach maven, I should damned well eat some peaches.<br /><br />Well. These particular peaches did not look enticing at all. Especially after the heavenly peaches I had been gobbling from Morton’s. They were bigger than apples, and I felt them – and while the little sign said TREE RIPE, READY TO EAT they were hard I could tell they’d have about as much taste as peach-flavored water. I brought each peach up to smell them, and they smelled like nothing. But hey, they were on sale. So I bought ten.<br /><br />Yesterday, two of the peaches seemed ready. But they weren’t. Because these peaches would never be ready. Saying these peaches are ready is like saying you’re ready for a colonoscopy. Sure, it might be time to eat these peaches: but it will never ever be right. The first peach was bad enough. It was mealy without being soft, and tasted almost fermented without being sweet. After I was done the taste – the gassy, sour taste of failure – just would not leave my mouth.<br /><br />But nothing could prepare me for the next peach.<br /><br />I felt it, and while the skin had a bit of give, I could tell that the flesh itself wasn’t yet soft. But whatever. I bit into it.<br /><br />And I was mistaken, for a moment, into thinking that I had bit into a plastic peach. It had no flavor to speak of. It was like chewing plastic. It was like chewing flavorless gum.<br /><br />Well, when I eat a bad peach, it does something to me, and this morning I woke up and just couldn’t bare the idea of getting out of bed, because I knew I would have to try to eat one of the next eight peaches. And they, too, would probably suck.<br /><br />There is a lesson in this, that I will expound upon later: ORGANIC FOOD REALLY – for some reason – TATES A LOT BETTER THAN THE CRAP YOU GET IN MOST GROCERY STORES.<br /><br />You see, I have pity for all of those overly-tanned Floridians who have never eaten a peach better than these monster peaches, who think that peaches are meant to make you want to kill yourself, who have never actually felt the joy of biting into a peach and having all the juices run down your hands an have it be so beautiful you can’t stop smiling. It’s like they haven’t really lived.2007/08/peches-52-and-53-monster-peach.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-2916216103778745810Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:16:00 +00002007-08-04T13:17:47.432-07:00boulderpeachestravelPeaches # 50 and 51: The GoodbyeAlison, an old friend from college and her boyfriend Michael watched as I tossed two overstuffed bags into the backseat of their car. The bags had just about everything that I owned in them. This does not amount to much more than a bunch of clothes, a computer, and some books. It didn’t seem so small when they were in my room, but taken out of my room, folded up into bags, zipped up, and in the back seat of an old station wagon, my life seemed so tiny that it could be upset by just a small breeze. We drove away, and with that my apartment of two and a half months was emptied of everything except dirt.<br /><br />But before we left, we each ate a peach from Morton’s. My peach was sweet, smooth, and just about the most wonderful peach I could imagine. I waved goodbye to my neighbor’s peach tree, the peaches still green and inedible, and then got in the waiting car.<br /><br />My next peach I ate I shared with Alison at five in the next morning, as that same car was idling in the terminal of the Denver International Airport. Alison brought along some of her peaches and we ate one each. I felt like the peach I had should be amazing. But while it had a nice texture, and a good, if watery taste, I knew that for that particular peach to really be amazing, it would need to wait a couple days. But of course, it couldn’t wait: I was leaving. When I was done I threw my pit into the garbage can and hoisted my bags on my shoulders, and went through the automatic door that led into the airport, the taste of peach on my tongue.2007/08/peaches-50-and-51-goodbye.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8867173203451301987.post-2268588102404321455Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:54:00 +00002008-12-12T15:48:34.094-08:00boulderdisappointingpeachesPeaches 40-48: The Last In Boulder<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href=" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="; alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5092249061298234450" border="0" /></a><br />This morning, my last in Boulder for a long while, I did not pack my things, or visit some scenic location, or say goodbye to my friends. I had a paper bag on my desk, and before I did anything else - before the bags were zipped up, the keys returned, or the dishes washed, that bag would have to have its contents emptied. Into my stomach.<br /><br />This was the bag of peaches that I bought about a week ago. I'd been waiting all this time for the peaches to get ripe, but today I had to eat them right away, because I don't believe they ;et you take peaches in as carry-on baggage. \I found about three out of four of the peaches were sour and lacked a peachy sweetness. Two peaches from the nine I ate this morning were really beautiful tasting.<br /><br />I keep on trying to construct a metaphor out of this. Leaving is incredibly hard. And not just the annoying practical things like putting my things away and transporting them a couple states away. It's so difficult to pick up everything that I've known for the past couple months and leave it behind the airport gates. I will close my eyes, take a nap on the plane, and leave in a different world. I don't think that's too much of a stretch or anything.<br /><br />I suppose I should feel a certain urge to sum up my life here. But as I was watching some cartoons on my computer this morning, cutting away the bruised parts of the latest peach with a plastic knife, depoisting the segments of discarded peach on a sheet of newspaper already havey with peach pits and damp with juice, I didn't think about much. Maybe because there is so much to think about, and so much to do. Maybe it's because right then - I was just eating peaches.<br /><br />I'll be out of internet contact for about a week, but I will be able to check my e-mail intermittently. I will not be out of peach contact, though. I will return, of course, with more peach adventures.2007/07/peaches-40-48-last-in-boulder.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Anonymous)