Despite the Bay Area’s mellow year round weather, nothing can sustain the all too fleeting presence of perfectly ripe peaches and plums at our local farmers’ markets during the summer. Around this time of year, you can always find me at the farmers’ market cradling a bag of peaches under one arm and impatiently winding my way through the throngs of people so I can get my charges safely home.
I didn’t always love peaches this much. As a child, we used to play stone fruit roulette at the supermarket produce section. You never knew whether the fruit you bought would be juicy and bursting with flavor or bland and mealy. The odds were stacked against us and more often than not, we lost our money to the house. As a result, I disliked peaches until one summer in my teens when my family took a road trip to Ventura County.
A Savory Life 