Wheel of the Year: Summer Solstice

Have you picked any fruit from your garden yet? Peas, strawberries, or those first tiny zucchini? Or found some peaches and other seasonal goodies at your market? Here in the mountains, the first flowers are fading, making room for plump fruits. We’re beginning to enjoy a Midsummer harvest—a promise of the rich bounty yet to come. Strawberry-rhubarb pie is cooling on the kitchen counter beside a big basket of North Carolina peaches whose sweet juices run off my chin.

Strawberry Jam waiting to be canned.

Of the eight spokes on the wheel of the year, the summer solstice, or Litha, is one I feel most of us celebrate intuitively. I need no rituals for I nearly levitate with energy this time of year with the sun shining, the flowers blooming, and the first fruits coming off the vine.  All of Appalachia is in throes of a celebratory love, in a place beyond language. 

But even on days when I feel puny, my spirit low, making me feel like I’m moving through mud, I can enjoy some fresh mint tea and bask in the sun knowing this-too-shall-pass. For here in the height of summer, when we’re covered in a blanket of green leaves and writhing blossoms, Litha is actually marking the beginning of the waning part of the year. The days will grow shorter from here on out. I take comfort in and celebrate this cycle: whether high or low or steady-as-she-goes, this moment will pass, heralding a new season.

I was conceived in late summer. And I always wonder if all the season long, I was calling to my mother, willing myself into existence. Bear me, bear me, borne me. My own firstborn, who surely called out to me across the firmament, for years, demanding my body, was conceived near the summer solstice with the help of modern medicine. This time of year we celebrate all that is in the throes of becoming. 

And in the spirit of celebrating, one needs sustenance. It has been a good year for peaches and I’ve been working on a recipe for Peach Cobbler. I love baking and experimenting: when I make something new I usually have 2 or 3 cookbooks open and a recipe pulled up from an online source. In Brandy’s Test Kitchen we’ve not quite perfected a cobbler recipe—it’s actually a bit of a trick to get the biscuit topping somewhat evenly cooked when it’s resting upon sopping wet peaches. But I did accidentally develop a mighty fine Peach Crisp recipe. I think it works so well because the peaches I’ve been getting are extra sweet and juicy. It’s so good, I might give up on the cobbler. 

Recipe for Peach Crisp

Put a light coating of butter and a sprinkle of sugar into the bottom of a 9” deep dish pie plate.

Add chunks of fresh peaches (with or without skin) or a quart of peach compote so that you nearly fill the dish.

Topping

½ Cup Self-Rising Flour (I love Hudson Crème SR)

½ Cup Rolled Oats

½ Cup Sugar (I like to mix brown and white)

½ Cup Toasted, slivered almonds (Pop them into a toaster oven for about 3 minutes)

Mix these Ingredients

Add ¼ Cup of melted Butter

Stir with fork until butter is evenly distributed & looks like damp sand.

Sprinkle the topping on the peaches and bake at 375. The peaches may bubble over a bit so I put my pie plate on a pizza tin before putting it into the oven.

Enjoy!