August 2009

As most of you know by now, I have been taking some family recipes, making sense out of them, cooking, baking and blogging the results. My grandmother, the keeper of the recipes, is away in the Poconos for the summer. She called me recently to request her recipes back so she could make “that peach shit.” She explained that she could wait on the other recipes but the peach shit is seasonal.  Also, ML’s post asking what do with summer fruit reminded me of my grandmother’s solution to the fruit problem. She’s not the biggest fan unless sugar and butter are involved. All this inspired me to make the peach shit as well. Even more noteworthy, I decided to try my hand at making something by myself without my grandmother or mother there to boss and ridicule help me.

The name of the dish comes from my grandfather who was jonesing for it on a lazy summer day. He asked my grandmother, “So when are you going to make it?” “Make what?” “You know, that peach shit.” I think he thought asking for a peach crumble sounded a little lame. That or he just had no idea what it was called. Either way the name stuck. Peach shit is indeed a peach crumble which is possibly the easiest thing in the world to bake. That said, I, working alone, could almost turn it into a Friday fuck-up. The only thing that redeemed it is that it’s really hard to make peaches, sugar, and butter turn out badly.  So what follows is kind of a what to do and what not to do to make some perfectly respectable peach shit.