-TS Eliot

I don’t know what it is about the last stanza of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock that has always made me think of beets.  I mean sure, the word red is in there, and red is eponymous with beets, but I don’t think that’s it.  I think it’s because I get some vision of waiflike sirens with rosy cheeks and garnet lips billowing on fragile seashells on the crest of a wave.  Red lips and cheeks always bring beets to my imagination because I love to paint the faces of everyone in the kitchen with halved beets whenever I’m working with them.  If no one is game, I step it up another notch and take out my 12” chef’s knife, drizzle beet juice all over it and my finger, and commence to bloodcurdlingly scream. That get’s them every time, of course then they really won’t let me paint their faces since they’re so mad at me. 

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Can you think of a better way to start an evening post-horseback wine tasting than with delicious slices of fresh, bursting peaches? Yeah, me neither, which is why it was the first thing I cooked (yes, cooked peaches) over the campfire the other night once we got back to the posh teepees to settle in for a night of “Glamping”— that is, glamorous camping.

If all this is a little nonsensical to you, let me just explain that we decided to get out of the city a few days ago for some much-needed midweek r&r and figured there was no better place to do it than in Central Washington’s up-and-coming wine country. Specifically, we stayed at the Cherry Wood Bed and Breakfast which offers luxurious accommodations in teepees as well as the opportunity to do your wine tasting on horseback. There is nothing like sidling up to a tasting room on a saddle, and riding amongst the vines was an experience unto itself indeed, but in this post I will focus on the peaches, as the recipe warrants it’s own entry. Read more