Last night I decided that our refrigerator could no longer contain the burden of two boxes of eggs and a small bag of green beans. So naturally I stuck them in some jars with vinegar! I have yet to try them (both the beans and the eggs take 3 days till well-brined), but I’ve made more than my share of refrigerator pickles, and I’m pretty confident that it’s hard to mess up. I’ve actually never had a pickled egg, which is a wrong that needs to be righted post-haste.

Here you can see the items required for spicy pickled green beans: garlic, celery salt, red peppers, a sprig of rosemary because I forgot to buy dill, and most importantly, a can of beer for the pickler.

The beet pickled egg recipe came from Southernoise Gluttony and the spicy pickled green bean recipe came from Three Points Kitchen. I pretty much made these so that I could take a picture of the pretty colors.

Dylan and I have been members of a CSA for three years now, and I can’t imagine a summer/fall season absent of lugging vegetable/fruit laden bags back to the apartment Saturday mornings. This year we switched to a different farm share, finding our previous one to be lacking in fruit varieties. Because folks – I’m in it for the fruit. Dylan prefers vegetables. The stranger the vegetable the more he is delighted – even though I’m inevitably the one who has to figure out just what to do with a kohlrabi or bunch of tatsoi. But me, I just love fruit. I killed a pint of blueberries in about 4 minutes yesterday – I guess I was spoiled by the vast wild blueberry fields just a short walk down the railroad tracks from my house as a kid (yes, I grew up in a Stephen King novel, sans the dead kid).

Anyway, this isn’t about blueberries, this is about peaches! Dylan and I aren’t big on sweets – I mean, we love them, but we never seem to be able to finish off an entire pie, or batch of cookies, or tray of muffins, or dish of crumble by ourselves. And though I like my fruit best raw, there’s only so many peaches that all ripen at the same time a girl can eat.

I promise that I won’t do recipe posts often – this isn’t a food blog – but I couldn’t resist sharing these two because they were so darn good, and looked pretty for the camera. So without further ado, not-too-sweet-peach-recipes! (Both of these were culled from Tastespotting, my favorite place to look for good recipes, because I tend to go on the picture alone when choosing one, and tastespotting is chock full of them.)

GINGER PEACH JULEPS
(via Dirty Gourmet, who got it from Nola)

Take two slices of peach, about 10 fresh mint leaves, and muddle with 1 or 2 (if you’re not a wimp like me) ounces of bourbon. I did this with a wooden spoon – it was my first time muddling, and I quite liked it. Then fill with ice and ginger ale. That’s it! It’s delicious. And probably best enjoyed at a picnic due to its refreshing nature, but it was raining when we made them. Don’t worry, they’re still delicious when had indoors. I do think the mason jar is mandatory though.

BLUEBERRY PEACH COFFEE CAKE
(Via My Kitchen Addiction, who got it from the Pioneer Woman Cookbook)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and grease a pie dish. In a bowl mix your dry ingredients – 1 1/4 cups of flour, 3/4 cups of cornmeal, 1/4 cup of sugar, 2 tsp of baking powder and of 1/2 tsp salt. In another bowl mix 1 egg, 3/4 cup of milk, and 1 cup of ricotta cheese. Add these wets to the dries and stir until just mixed. Pour into your dish and press 1 cup of peeled chopped peaches and 1 cup of blueberries into the batter. Sprinkle with 1 Tbsp of raw sugar and pop into the oven. in about 30-35 minutes (or 40 if the bottom drawer thing in your oven won’t close like mine so everything takes longer because heat is constantly leaking out) it’s done! It tastes a lot like a corn muffin, if you’re looking for something sweeter, double the sugar.