Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Free!

This peach pie has a peachy sort of shape cut into the crust (Jen's idea, not mine)!

Also, I put this peach pie picture up first because I know how many people are inclined to click on a picture of a pie, if presented with one. Now you're trapped and sliiiightly more likely to read this post! Hungry Sam blogging advice. Write it down, kids.

Back story!

When last I traveled to Atlanta, Jen and I made the hour-long trek to a peach orchard a little ways south which offered a "pick-your-own" option. Now, I have fantastic memories of apple picking back home in Maine as a kid, climbing trees, eating ourselves sick on Macintosh apples, hurling them at one another (hey, three boys), etc. We were always somewhat limited, though, in the number we could reasonably pick; after all, we paid by the pound (and my mom only really needed so many for cooking up and jarring apple sauce). At some point good sense kicked in, and so we'd stop picking. On some irrational level, I was expecting that peach picking would be the same thing. Except with peaches.

At the mid point.

Not so with the peaches, on a couple counts! First, it was hot. This was not "enjoy a crisp apple on a crisp fall day" sort of experience; this was a "pick lots of peaches before we sweated to death in August Georgia heat" sort of day. Welcome to the South, Hungry Sam.

Second, you can't really climb peach trees, at least not without getting lots of sticky sap all over yourself and murdering some innocent peach trees (they're not so sturdy).

Third, we didn't pay by the pound. We simply paid for a half-bushel tin bucket and were allowed to pick as many as we wanted.

Now, there were only two of us, and I was flying home in a day, so obviously it would be ridiculous to pick a whole half-bushel (about 25 lbs.) of peaches. So obviously that's exactly what we did.

Don't let the perspective throw you; those are BIG PEACHES.

And obviously, I made a pie. Here I am, making it and stuff!

Come hither...and help me peel some peaches.

Peeling all them thar peaches took a good long time, but as with all pies, it was ultimately worth it. Also, those bags were all about half full of peaches. I told you, millions of peaches!

As far as recipes go, I used this classic from Food & Wine magazine, which absolutely did the trick. It ended up a tad runny, but delicious. And, again, note the awesome peach design on the top crust!

If you enjoyed the disjointed telling of the story of this pie, you may also enjoy Hungry Sam's somewhat useful post on Key Lime Pie (The Easiest Pie Ever).