millions of peaches, peaches for me

labor day. the end of summer. and for alicia and johnny, a first trip to the lake michigan shore.

it was a fog heavy morning, and after first trying out the beach my dad used to spend his high school summers at in winnetka, only to turn away with our tails between our legs because the fog was so thick, the air so cold, we wound up in evanston, walking something like a half mile, cooler and beach bag in tow, only to be turned away at the entrance because we didn't have a) a season pass or b) sixteen bucks cash. so, we picnicked on the grass, behind the iron curtain of a wooden fence that kept the likes of us ragamuffins from the patrons of the beach, for free.

(after finishing this post, alicia told me she'd used the same all-telling picture. well, on the risk of being slapped with an infringement lawsuit by my girlfriend, i'm keeping it. but here's her post, too...)

i popped open a bottle of a white spanish blend and we drank from red solo cups, which somehow was fittingly perfect; we noshed on a baguette and tore pieces of prosciutto from the deli packaging; sliced away at a hunk of smoked gouda and plucked crackers from a box that we slabbed the cheese on; popped open tupperware lids and dipped our forks into a chopped caprese salad with sweet 100 tomatoes from nichols farm, basil, and mozzerella and so too juicy red raspberries from another container, also from nichols farm; and licked our fingers clean of the melted peanut butter that covered the pretzels we bought from olivia's. and to top it all off, alicia and i slipped on our mits and tossed a ball around for the very first time. we even had a couple stop on their bikes and sit at a picnic table to watch us—and by that, i mean get a kick out of the twenty-something, backward hat wearing kid in glasses try to teach the twenty-something, pink skirt wearing girlfriend how to catch a baseball.

and then came dinner, which meant my first return to the grill since dad nearly s'mored my arm over the thing.

though i jumped away like a school girl everytime i dropped a match over the coals, i had a good fire going. and for dinner, just the two of us, i grilled the one foodstuff i've eaten more of than anything else: cheeseburgers. and i served them with peaches.


we came home sunday with gorgeous peaches from seedling farm and like always, while at the market, my demented mind thought of what was at home that i could throw on the burger. it's a pretty barren kitchen right now so naturally, when the only thing that really came to mind was the brown bag full of peaches that was on our butcher block, i said yeah, that's the stuff!

and so, along with thick cut red onion, i sliced up a peach and charred the summer fruit over the grill, drizzling oil over the coals, giddy and bouncing like a kid when the fire leapt up and engulfed the onion and peach in flames. since i wanted the char, i went with a smoked gruyere from the market to kick the smoky factor from the grill up another rung, and spooned bbq sauce over the buns.

and grilled peach? on a burger? in all seriousness, it might just've been the best thing i've ever tasted on a patty, sandwiched between two buns.