Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief

Or... three recipes (sorta) and one ramble. Take your pick. I'm not sure why anyone would choose THAT over song lyrics, but who am I to judge?

Anyway.

Here's the thing.  Our lovely, lovely neighbors gave us a small box of peaches and a bag of pears this weekend.  Now pears, they take a while to ripen up, so that's cool.  But the peaches?  Were totally ripe the day they crossed the threshold, and probably should have been dealt with then and there.

Well, I did make a peach buckle using that one blueberry buckle recipe I've had forever (here's a recipe that's a lot like mine, only I sprinkle my blueberries / peaches on top of the cake instead of folding them in), but that only used up a couple.

So last night, I decided the time was nigh (is that spelled right?  Spell check says yes, but it looks all weird) to deal with the peaches.  I came to this conclusion after witnessing the cloud of fruit flies that had taken up residence in the box.  Fruit flies are so creepy.  They might only live a month, but boy, do they pack it in.

(So. Gross.)

I didn't have a lot of peaches (especially after pitching the rotting, oozing members of the horde--I really should have dealt with these suckers earlier), and what was left was really pretty soft.  So I made peach butter.  Which is essentially: 7 cups of sliced peaches, pureed; 3 cups of sugar; and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Stir that around constantly until it starts boiling, and then spend another 15-20 minutes still stirring constantly until it's thickened and lovely.  Then you put it in a water bath for 5 minutes and yell "THANK YOU!" every time a seal pops.

(There.  That was easy.)

Even though I tried my best to leave the fruit flies outside, they still snuck in.  My kitchen was a cloud of grossness.  So here's what I did: I took a bowl, I filled it about 2/3 full with water, then I added some cider vinegar and a squirt of dish soap.  The vinegar attracts them, the water drowns them, and the dish soap coats their wings or something so they can't fly out once they realize what's going on.  (Fruit flies are smart.  I swear.)  Then I scrubbed the heck out of my kitchen and went to bed.

This morning?  A lot of drowned fruit flies.  And pretty, pretty peach butter to coo over.  Canning is very satisfying.

I thought it would be sort of funny to write a post about making that Fruit Fly Solution, as I like to refer to it, and pretend that I was all Martha, and make some sort of crappy preschool project container and act like I was all serious, but then I decided that would be too much work.  Between the dream and the reality falls the shadow... and laziness doesn't help, either.

Sometimes, the songs just pick themselves. U2, "The Fly."  Because it's no secret the stars are falling from the sky.  And also, I love this song.  Oh, Bono!  Thou doth rock.