Peaches like you've never seen before!

Please excuse the low quality of the photo. In real life, all these peaches (except the two halves of a regular 'yellow' peach I put in for reference) were the color of a black cherry.

I found them in my neighbor's yard (they don't live here and I have permission to harvest). I nearly ignored them because the fully ripe peaches were a grayish color with just a hint of rose underneath. I thought that our drought this year had caused some malfunction. But then I shook the tree and one peach hit the trunk on the way down, tearing the skin and revealing this amazing 'black peach' flesh underneath.

One tentative taste told me these really were ripe peaches, of a color I've never seen before.

As the tree is too tall (and I'm forbidden from climbing the ladder ever since the time I fell off it and whacked my head and caused much sleeplessness in the home due to needing observation for possible concussion) I had to shake the peaches down, which naturally caused a lot of bruising.

But what better way to use a windfall of these beautiful peaches than to make some peach jam? So, jam I did. Amazingly, these peaches must be absolutely packed with pectin and acid, because they practically jelled before I had a chance to cook them. The jam is the color of blackberry jam but smells and tastes like peach jam. It is truly luscious.

And I would have missed it if I had judged this book by it's cover. Just goes to show.

What do you do when you live in France and have fresh peach jam and a blog about dessert? That's right, you make crepes. That's coming up in the next post...stay tuned!