Indian Blood Peach Pie

My youngest asked yesterday if we could have a “nice Sunday dinner.” I have gone back and forth on this. I like the idea of ending the weekend and starting the week out with a nice dinner. I went through a period of eating in the formal dining room, setting a more formal table, and eating a more formal dinner on Sundays. I’ve also rebelled and declared Sunday dinners to be soup and sandwich night, with childhood memories of the same. At one point, I switched our pizza nights to Sunday but I could never quite get into that. On the one hand, I have more time on Sunday, since I don’t “work” that day. However, my life is such that usually we usually clean the house Saturday mornings (another childhood echo), I run errands or we do a bit of shopping, and we entertain guests more often than not. Sundays became the day for outside chores, which might mean a trip to the hardware store or nursery, some planting, some pruning, and so forth.

Today, for example, I paid bills in the morning, balanced checkbooks and the like (two accounts since I’m self employed), finished up some stray laundry from yesterday, and then ran out to Orchard Supply for some plants. I want to do a bit more of a fall/winter garden than I normally do. Remind me not to take my youngest to the nursery again! I came home with some bulbs (make that like a hundred!), some snapdragons, which my kids have always called dragon snaps which makes me think of gingersnaps to keep on the food topic, some verbena, transplants for broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and spinach plus seeds for rainbow colored beans, lettuce, carrots, beets, and turnips. She helped me plant some of them…

I came in from the garden totally wiped about 3pm and spied the basket of peaches I’d picked yesterday before my eldest offered to make the cake for dessert. They were very ripe and needed to be dealt with, so I decided I could get away with an easy Sunday dinner if I had a peach pie for dessert–hence the beginning of this longish entry. And in the spirit of CheapCooking, I mixed up 3 pie crusts at a time and popped one in the freezer for another day. I also put the extra peaches in the freezer for smoothies another day.

These are more of the Indian Blood Peaches which are ripe NOW. I need my fruit picker to reach the highest ones. I made a big pie and froze another quart of sliced peaches. To easily skin the peaches, drop them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. The skins will slip right off.

The rest of the dinner was baked chicken thighs with some “shake and bake” type coating, steamed broccoli, and rice.