Last weekend I baked my best-yet peach pie using local sweet peaches. I hardly had the chance to snap a picture of it before hubby cut it up. 🙂

I got these sweet peaches from local market. They are so sweet that I did not even need to add sugar into the filling – just cut them up and stuffed the crust and TADA! One thing I learned in NC is to go to get seasonal fruit at Farmer’s Markets. Even though we can buy any fruit any time of the year from a well-stocked supermarket, there is something special about in-season fruit and vegetables – they just taste better!

We are fortunate enough to live at a place where people eat local. There are two small Farmer’s Markets nearby, open once a week but on different days, and a really big one about 40 minutes driving distance that opens daily. Thee you can get:

1. Fresh produce that are fully grown. They might not last as long in the fridge, but they are more flavorful than their pre-picked counterparts in the supermarket.

2. More varieties. Now it is peach season and there are like five or six different kinds of peaches offered at Farmer’s Market. Some are sweeter, some are more crisp, so you can pick the right kind for you. We got the sweet ones for making pie, plus some slightly crisp ones for grilling. I grow arugula this year and we can never get tired of this grilled peach and arugula salad. It is so easy to put together and it is a real crowd-pleaser.

Getting groceries from Farmer’s Market is also a nostalgia for me. When I grew up in China, there wasn’t any supermarket or pre-packaged food. All the groceries, including meat and fish, were bought from Farmer’s Market. There were a lot of small Farmer’s Markets and they open every morning and late afternoon, so people generally pick up fresh produce on their way home after work, and cook dinner with them immediately. Frankly, fish and poultry were often killed right in front you for you to take home (yes it made me sad but they are waaaaay more delicious when they are fresh!). As a teen, I would swing by the market after school, picking up whatever I felt like for dinner that day, and cooking dinner before my parents got home. It was such an amazing experience and I always miss how simple and convenience life was at that time.

Oh, I finally bought the Pie book. It will be a very challenging summer to not put on some weight!