peaches in july

It's hard to get more seasonal, produce-wise, than peaches in July. They're everywhere, those improbably fuzzy, delectably-scented red-and-yellow marvels. When I was into Greek myths, in elementary school, I always pictured ambrosia, the food of the gods, as something to do with peaches. They are an ethereal food.

Peaches gave me pause today, however, as I ate my lunch at work. Eating a peach is an earthy, almost rugged experience. The skin is tough and furry, but once you bite through, the insides are incredibly juicy, they drip, your hands get sticky. Peaches should be eaten outdoors in the summer. You've just bought one at a farm stand, bright red and yellow, firm, the size of your palm, and you lean over as your teeth pierce the skin, watching ambrosia-scented juice drip onto the sidewalk, and onto your bare toes.

I bought my peaches this weekend at my co-op, where I paid 89 cents a pound for the local, organic beauties. They seemed very earth-bound at the time - I rummaged through a cardboard box for the best ones as people roamed around me in the sticky Washington summer heat, buying fennel bulbs and large, mysterious, oval melons. When I fished a peach out of my lunch bag this afternoon, though, something seemed incongruous. I was dressed in work clothes, sitting in front of my computer, with goosebumps on my arms from the air conditioning even as a heat wave nudged temperatures outside into the high nineties. When I bit into my lunchtime peach, juice did drip - not, alas, onto hot asphalt and dusty toes but onto my neatly-ironed khaki pants. Peaches, it seems, are not a food for the office. They belong to long, lazy, sweltering summer days - in other words, like I thought when I was nine, to heaven.

This recipe for peach and cherry crisp (from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook) is delicious in early- to mid-summer, when both these fruits are in season.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups peeled and sliced peaches, plus 2 cups pitted, halved dark cherries
• 2-3 Tbs lemon juice
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup flour
• 2-3 Tbs brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 5 Tbs melted butter
• optional: 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Procedure:

• Preheat oven to 375
• Combine peaches, cherries, lemon juice, and white sugar in a 9-inch square pan
• Mix together remaining ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Distribute over the top of the fruit and pat firmly in place.
• Bake uncovered for 35-40 minutes, until the top is crisp and lightly browned and the fruit is bubbling around the edges. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature, plain or à la mode.