I am eating a peach right now and it tastes like heaven. I always resented summer (heat, humidity, chokingly stuffy cars) but now I have a reason to celebrate it: these sweet, ripe, beautiful local peaches.

This is not a freestone peach, so it’s messy; the flesh is sticking to the pit in clumps and strands, and everything is getting stuck in my teeth. Also, my cubemate is doing a valiant job of ignoring the slurps and smacking sounds I’m making as I try not to let a single drop of juice escape to run down my arm. Peaches are not a graceful fruit to eat. But a fresh, summer-ripe peach is totally worth the inevitable assault on your dignity.

Mmm, peaches. I’m going to be haunting the farmer’s market for these.

Right, where was I? This week is week 6 of the Breezy Willow summer CSA. In the pickup:

Zucchini, green beans, blueberries, garlic, peaches(!!!), cucumbers, eggplant, three tiny heads of broccoli, kale, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest challah). I also grabbed another handful of sage and thyme, which are likely destined to accompany chicken in some way. (Hmm, it’s been a while since I made toaster oven chicken.)

I’ll probably steam the broccoli, and blanch the green beans and kale (all using the same pot of water; let’s not waste joules here). I like cooking vegetables and then sticking them in the fridge for later; I find that having cooked vegetables around greatly simplifies activities like packing lunches and assembling quick weeknight dinners. And, in a pinch, you can at least serve them alongside whatever fast food meal you picked up on the way home because you left work late / got stuck leaving daycare / just don’t have time or energy to cook. (No domestic goddess, me.)

The cucumbers will probably get pickled with the cucumbers from last week’s pickup, since I hadn’t gotten around to that. And the peaches and blueberries will take care of themselves.

As for the eggplant, no concrete plans yet. The eggplant possibilities are endless. We might grill it, if we fire up the grill this weekend (and if so that’s likely where the zucchini will get cooked too), or we could roast it for baba ghannouj (in which case the kale will get cooked then as well), or maybe I’ll try one of those crazy recipes from the Ottolenghi cookbook that we got for Christmas. The world is my oyster! Or my eggplant, anyway.

CSA membership doesn’t take any special amount of creativity; it just takes commitment. Cook, preserve, or freeze, it doesn’t matter. Just get the pickup out of the way; next week is coming, ready or not.