If it is nine hundred degrees in the kitchen and everything in the kitchen is sticky, then it must be peach season.

Three more canners full of peaches have been put up. That makes twenty eight quarts so far this year. I think it might last until mid-winter if I'm lucky. Considering that Simon finally tried a bite peach in syrup tonight and promptly gobbled up half of the peach, I think I might not be so lucky. I have a quarter of a bushel left, and I want to make an utterly divine peach salsa out of that. I should have bought another half bushel from the peach delivery people yesterday. I will just have to hope that the fruit guy can give me a good price on another box or two. One bushel so far, and I have not even made a peach pie yet.

On a related note, I have been trying to get Vincent to expand the fruits that he will eat. Last year, it was only sliced apples, bananas and grape jam. This spring, he added strawberry jam and alpine strawberries. Doesn't that figure? A fruit that is the size of an m&m and not very prolific, he decides that he will eat. I'm working on expanding that patch in the garden.

Yesterday, he had to eat five spoonfuls of applesauce with dinner, and he acted like I was torturing him. Today, he had to eat one slice of a fresh peach (not even a quarter, just a slice). After eating the peach, he declared it horrible, but then said that he loves applesauce.

Go figure.

I'm going to keep on the forced fruit trying for a while longer. I need him to eat something more sustainable than bananas (oh, it kills me to buy a bunch imported, monoculture fruit every week!) and while apples are great in the fall, to buy them in the spring and summer means I'm getting imported fruits or the tail end of last year's stored harvest. I want that child to eat a little more seasonally. At least with applesauce, I put up quarts of that every year, so it is a more sustainable option.

I wonder, could I get him to eat blueberries or even pears?