STONE FRUIT INTERVENTION

The last hurrah of summer fruit is taking its toll on me. I am bombarded from all sides with ripe peaches and right now nectarines. “Stop the madness, Stone Fruit!
“You know I love you, but you’re killing me!”
 
Friday was a particularly brutal day in the pie trenches. By 8:30 am it had already been a day. I was quietly fuming over the re-telling of an incident from Thursday, Julia Child’s birthday. There was some commotion over a beautifully decorated sugar cookie with a Julia quote painstakingly written in royal icing. A disgruntled individual felt the cookie was perpetuating a negative stereotype about women in the kitchen. Funny thing- our entire kitchen crew is female, not to mention forward thinking.
 
The curmudgeonly cookie disparager should know that yesterday I conducted a totally casual social media poll, based on a Julia-ism. Julia Child once said, (and I quote) “I think every woman should have a blowtorch.” It turns out that blowtorches are quite common in home kitchens, with 70% of those polled (many of them women) claiming to own one. I like to think that we have Julia to thank for the popularity of kitchen torches. Her television career spanned decades, with many episodes dedicated to the art of flambé. (Some episodes more successfully than others, but she always cautioned her viewers to be careful around an open flame.) I think about Julia (and my eyelashes) every time I torch a meringue.
 
I continue thinking about Julia all the way home. The way her Mousse au Chocolat handily snagged my High School French Club Presidency. The way she casually introduced me to cream puffs piped as swans, swimming on a pool of chocolate sauce. It was Julia as the French Chef, who gave me the courage to arm myself with a kitchen torch, a critical skill requirement for every restaurant job I ever had. Her greatest lesson was reminding all of us to stop apologizing for mistakes in the kitchen. Sage advice, indeed.
 
Lacking the foresight to pick up some heavy cream on the way home, I am unable to satisfy my hankering for chocolate mousse. There is a gaping hole in the evening’s dessert course, and it's making me cranky. Still preoccupied with the events of the day, I begin rummaging through the refrigerator in search of inspiration. Nothing leaps out at me save for a container of caramel sauce. Scanning the kitchen counter for fruit, a solitary fuzzy peach and a smooth skinned nectarine look lost in a cavernous fruit bowl. Turning my back on the paltry fruit offering, I'm forced to  forage through the freezer. The sound of the ice machine echoes through the kitchen. From the depths, I unearth two plastic wrapped discs of what look like pie dough. I set one of them on the counter just a little too loudly. The fruit in the fruit bowl jumps.
 
Peach turns to Nectarine then to me. “Rough day? You seem a little, well, pre-
occupied, a little down in the mouth." Nectarine nods then adds, “Maybe talking about it will help.”
 
“What are you talking about?” I reply, whacking the ice-cold pie dough with my heaviest rolling pin.

Peach treads cautiously. “It’s August, isn’t it?” Brushing the leaf out of her eyes, Peach elaborates. “We’re talking about you. How you seem unable to live in the moment, refusing to embrace August and accept the season in front of you.” Peach is on a roll and can’t seem to stop herself.  “There’s a reason you’re constantly pining for a different season, living in the past or the future, never in the now.”
 
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. “Did you ever think that possibly it's the fault of the fruit? Maybe it's under ripe, or over ripe. Or there’s simply too much of it at one time! You don’t understand,” I explain. “August isn’t the problem. August foreshadows the problem. Once we’ve crossed mid-August, it’s too late. Yesterday was Julia’s 107th birthday, August 15th. It’s practically September. Costco is decked out in Halloween and the Farmers’ Market wants me to buy apples. Apples?! I don’t want apples!” I hiss through clenched teeth.
 
The stone fruit leans back in the bowl. “Could it be,” Nectarine suggests in her best Dr. Fraser Winslow Crane voice, “that the problem isn’t the apple? Perhaps,” Nectarine pauses before continuing. “Perhaps the problem is your inability to live one fruit at a time. Think about it, Nice Pie. Try it. One. Fruit. At. A. Time.”
 
Peach nods solemnly. “We know that you’ve put up a good front. But the truth is so much of this stems from that nasty break-up with Rhubarb. That was heart-breaking…”
 
Catching my reflection in the tempered glass of the oven door, I weigh their words carefully, if only momentarily. Grabbing the fruit bowl and whacking the circle of pie dough once again for emphasis, I preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Plucking my well-worn copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking from the shelf, I wonder- how much bourbon is considered too much bourbon in a caramel sauce?