Nectarines + Peaches

Appears in

Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit

Published 2023

About

When I think of peaches, I think of two things.

The first is picking peaches with my grandfather in South Haven, Michigan. We’d go early in the morning and pick bushel basket after bushel basket, only to wrap up the day sitting on the tailgate as he sliced a sun-warmed fruit with his pocket knife, juice dripping down my chin, and my heart wrapped in the gauzy, golden light of future nostalgia.

The second is an image of the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath. Parents and children alike harvesting peaches as fast as possible in the hard light of Depression-era Salinas Valley. Harvesting food and having none to eat themselves; the youngest child gorging on so many unsaleable peaches that he gives himself what his brother calls “the skitters.”