88 Southern Illinois Peaches

If you give a family 88 Southern Illinois peaches, they are going to want to eat most of them fresh from the counter, sliced, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, too.

Some they will not even bother slicing; instead, they will eat them standing directly over the sink, letting the juice run down their hands.

They will cut up some of these peaches into small pieces, so the littlest member of the family can nibble on them, too.

If you give a family 88 Southern Illinois peaches, they are going to want to puree many of them, so the littlest member of the family can enjoy them for meal after meal, plain or mixed into oatmeal or paired with plums or other fruits that are almost (but not quite) as tasty as the fresh peaches.

They will blanch and slice these peaches, then toss them with lemon juice and a light sugar syrup so they can freeze bag after bag of them for use when peach season is but a hazy memory. Some of these bags of frozen peaches they will share with friends, because it's no fun keeping all the juiciness to yourself.

If you give a family 88 Southern Illinois peaches, they will have roasted pork chops and peaches as a main dish and a wonderful peach cobbler for dessert.

(Although technically the peach cobbler will not be made from the 88 peaches, as it will come from Not-So-Conservative Grandmom. So technically, the family will consume more than 88 Southern Illinois peaches before all is said and done.)

They will re-create the peach and prosciutto pizza from The Harvest Cafe in Delavan, and then wish they had time to re-create it again.

Then because they are going on vacation and there are still peaches on the counter, they will again blanch and slice the peaches, toss these with lemon juice and light sugar syrup, and begin counting down the days until they have an excuse to take a bag of frozen sweetness from the freezer to puree or baked into a pie or whatever else they might choose to do with what remains of those 88 Southern Illinois peaches.