By Second year of school begins. New class, new files, same room. The walker path is cleared. The visual schedule is up. The snack basket is full — I expanded the snack budget this year, which means I am spending sixty-five dollars of my own money on crackers and applesauce pouches instead of forty-six, and I find this completely reasonable. The school's supply budget is still forty dollars. I have accepted this as a fixed condition and I am working around it.
The new kids are different from last year's in the ways all classrooms are different: different configurations, different challenges, different moments of pure unexpected grace. There is a girl I will call Isabel who uses a communication app on a tablet and who, on the first day, looked at the picture-exchange symbols on the board and immediately pressed the symbol for "more" on her tablet and pointed at the board. That means she recognized that the board and her tablet were doing related things. On day one. I wrote it down. I called her mother that evening to say: she understood something important today.
Ryan made dinner at his apartment on Saturday — a real dinner, not the firehouse pasta but an actual effort: braised short ribs with polenta, from a recipe he said he had "practiced twice this week." He had practiced twice. The short ribs were deeply flavored, the polenta was creamy, the whole thing was more than competent. He said "Was it good?" I said: you practiced twice and it shows, in all the right ways. He said "I wanted it to be good." I said I know. I ate two servings. He seemed pleased. I was pleased. Both of us eating short ribs at his kitchen table in Bridgeport on a Saturday night in August. Very pleased.
Made a peach and almond tart this week for the blog — the last of the peaches from the market, in a simple tart shell with frangipane (almond cream: butter, sugar, egg, almond flour, a splash of almond extract). Under four dollars. The summer is in the last of the peaches now. You can taste August ending in them, which sounds like a sad thing but is actually a good thing — the intensification that comes right before the season changes. I ate the last peach slice on Sunday and thought: enough. The summer was enough. More than enough.
The tart I made this week started with those last market peaches — the ones that are almost too ripe, almost too sweet, the ones that bruise if you look at them wrong — and it reminded me that the simplest treatment is usually the right one. If you don’t have the time or the almond flour for a full frangipane, baked peaches give you the same feeling: warmth, summer concentrated, something that tastes like it took more effort than it did. This is the version to make when you want the season to linger just a little longer.
Baked Peaches
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 ripe peaches, halved and pitted
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons sliced almonds
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 375°F. Lightly butter a baking dish large enough to hold all 8 peach halves in a single layer.
- Prepare the peaches. Halve and pit the peaches. If needed, slice a thin sliver off the rounded side of each half so they sit flat. Arrange cut-side up in the prepared dish.
- Make the topping. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, almond extract, lemon juice, and salt. Spoon the mixture evenly into the hollow of each peach half. Dot with the small pieces of butter and scatter sliced almonds over the top.
- Bake. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the peaches are tender when pierced with a fork and the juices are bubbling and slightly caramelized around the edges. The almonds should be lightly golden.
- Rest and serve. Let the peaches cool for 5 minutes before serving. Spoon any pan juices over the top. Serve as-is, or alongside vanilla ice cream or a spoonful of plain yogurt.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 148 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 22g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 40mg