Stuffed Peaches

Instructions

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   cinnamon Preheat oven to 350F. Mix berries, walnuts, sugars and lemon juice. Fill each peach half with berry mixture. Place each peach half in large muffin pan to keep from rolling over, or in shallow baking dish. Pour corn syrup over peaches. Bake for 1 hour. Remove from oven. Dust with granulated sugar and cinnamon. Place under broiler until golden brown. Serve immediately. See also: Georgia Summer Spritzer Aunt Ivy’s Peach Chutney Sweet Georgia Jam Southern Style Barbecue Sauce

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   The Storytellers will turn to quilting. I can’t think of any other name that would have evoked such feeling and storytelling as quilting has. Even for those who have never picked up a needle. Everyone, it seems, has a quilting story to tell. Many are eagerly and proudly told. Some are reluctant and sadly shared. All are precious memories. A neatly dressed middle-aged woman recalled quilting with her grandmother at a local church bee. Grandma was such a perfectionist that after her friends went home, she would pull out any less-than-perfect stitches and redo them. She never told her friends she did so. She loved them too much. And she quilted for the companionship. The woman learned lessons of love from her Grandma. A young woman with long unruly hair remembered her spinster aunt teaching her to quilt as a young girl. The little girl accidentally left a knot on the top of the quilt and wanted to take it out so not to ruin the aunt’s quilt. No, the aunt said, leave it in. That way when I run my fingers over the top and feel the knot, it will remind me of you. The young woman learned about loving acceptance and the poignancy of memory from her aunt. An older woman recalled that her mother worked in a cotton mill during the Depression. Each night she was given a half yard of new cloth to clean down the machines. Instead of using the new piece, she kept it and took it home. She used another old cloth and washed it over and over again, secretly taking it back in to work with her every day. From all the new pieces of cloth she made clothes for the family, and wonderful scrap quilts for the less fortunate—at least she had a job to feed her family. The woman learned about resourcefulness from her mother, and has committed her life to helping others. A teacher of remedial reading classes for children took a quilting class at a local quilt shop. She had never done anything like this before. All the other women in class seemed better and faster at learning than she was. “This is how my students feel in normal classrooms,” she realized. The teacher learned heartfelt compassion and

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   patience from her own awkwardness. “I don’t remember ever seeing my Grandma quilting but I know she did,” another woman looks inward for memories. “I remember her baking though and smelling brownies coming from the oven. I’d be in a rocking chair on the porch, reading Nancy Drew novels, wrapped in a quilt. She would bring out cookies and milk just when there was not enough daylight left to read and say, ‘Don’t strain your eyes, dear.’ That was our signal. I’d close the book and we’d sit and talk, eat brownies and rock. I don’t know what we talked about. Anything and everything, I guess.” Every story is told the same way, with far off distant looks as the teller relives the tale. Every story is of women, irrepressible creativity, and love. Two of the most comforting things in life: a quilt and chocolate. I suppose if you’re on a diet you have to forgo this chapter. Go wrap yourself in a quilt and you’ll feel better.... We have to thank the Aztecs for discovering the coco bean and all its intoxicating glory. It was considered to be food fit only for the gods and consumed only by the pivileged, and was tantamount to religious ecstasy. It is also puported to be an aphrodisiac. Montezuma apparently drank up to 50 cups of it a day. (Unfortunately the Aztecs also sacrificed virgins by throwing them into deep wells. What a waste.) The Belgians took chcolate to its decadent heights by moulding it into decorative shapes. The Swiss, in an effort to keep warm on long snowy nights, melted it into milk and drank it, or melted in a fondue and dipped everything in the kitchen into it. The English invented the chocolate candybar itself, and finally the Americans packaged and marketed it to the masses. Chocolate is now a ten billion dollar industry annually. Every year, the average per capita consumption of chocolate is ten pounds! Well, I know I don’t eat ten pounds of chocolate every year. In fact, no one I know does. At least none of us will admit it. So, somewhere there are a lot of people eating more than their share.... Today we are inundated with cheap and easily available chocolate—in everything from enticing television ads, to grab-handy candycounters at the grocery

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   checkout... everywhere. Chocolate is great (but my all-time favorite flavor is raspberry) so I only make chocolate for special occasions that way I continue to appreciate its flavor. When Michael wants to really send me into paroxyms of delight, he brings me raspberry-filled dark chocolate and I’m putty in his arms. When I serve chocolate for guests, I want them to stand up and salute it. So the recipes I look for and use need to be different and unusual and special, like the ones that follow: