Over at the Forktress of Solitude, the apricot tree that lives in our driveway has started fruiting for the first time since we built the place as a sort of storage facility for the ghost of our dad Marlon Brando. We were surprised to see this going down, but we loved the tree already because it provides shade for our Forkmobile—even more so now that it’s dropping fuzzy gold. Of course, we’re allergic to a number of stone fruits and can’t eat the apricots, but there are people in our life to whom they might go, and we’re just plain blown away by trees anyway.
This isn’t about apricots, though, but rather another fuzzy fruit that has been on our mind, the noble peach. In honor of that weird train of thought (and the return of that dude Matt who comes to Santa Fe every summer with amazing peaches about which no one will shut the hell up for months on end—find him in the lot of American Home Furnishing, at least for now, at 901 St. Michael’s Drive), we thought it might be cool to learn a little bit about peaches. BUT NOT APRICOTS! They’ll live in the awkward segue of this edition of The Fork and NO PLACE ELSE!!!!
Oh, and please note that we don’t have any extra info about Matt the Peach Guy, we just know we keep seeing him out there slingin’ peaches.
Word on the street is that the nutritional makeup of peaches is out of control. We’re talking vitamins C, A, K, E and both the Bs. Do we like that that spelled “CAKE?” Yes, obviously, but unlike with cake, you can eat peaches on repeat for, like, a long time. Actually, you can do that with cake, we don’t care.
Apparently the provenance of the term “peachy keen” is rooted in gift-giving, specifically of the peach kind. We love a good phrase or saying, so we particularly enjoyed this bit of trivia: Linguists believe that when folks with a surplus of peaches gifted those fuzzy little bastards to someone, it was considered so nice that it made them feel good as heck, thus the specificity of the peach-bearing saying.
Peach fuzz is more than the nickname you gave your nephew because you’re mean and think it’s funny to hassle young people about their appearances during the most emotionally devastating period of their lives—it’s a defense thing. It’s about keeping the peach safer on the tree somehow; like, a way to fight off bugs or whatever. Similar to the capsaicin in chile, though, humans like the stuff and eat it more because of it (not us, it makes our skin crawl, but also peaches will kill us).
According to ‘90s boy band LFO, some of the girls of summer come from “Georgia, where the peaches grow,” where “they drink lemonade and speak real slow.” To be fair, the song also includes lyrics like “There was a good man named Paul Revere, I feel much better, baby, when you’re near,” and “Fell deep in love but now we ain’t speaking, Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton,” and “New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits, Chinese food makes me sick,” so you’d be forgiven for assuming they’re full of shit, but yes, Georgia is known as the state with the peaches. Also, we’re not kidding about those lyrics. Those are actually the lyrics to the LFO song “Summer Girls.” There’s more, too, you should just look it up—it’s INSANE.
Actually, here, here’s the link. Just...we love how terrible this is. At the very least, you can say they didn’t have a songwriting committee like other boy bands. Still, this is unintentionally hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHuGG_FsC20
Speaking of Georgia, the state’s annual Peach Festival makes the world’s largest peach cobbler every year, with the largest thus far clocking in at 11 by 5 feet. That’s a big ol’ cobbler.
If you’re still hungry for peaches after checking out that song from before, you might like to know that a good-sized peach has fewer than 70 calories, but is packed with fiber. Eating a peach in the morning will not only be good for calorie-counters, you’ll be able to ride the fart train to work!
Lastly in our totally factual and in no way jokey peach lesson, the fruit apparently originated in China some 4,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest domesticated fruits. Peach scientists from Clemson University cite that a Chinese encyclopedia from 500 BC states how said peaches “require good soil,” and “respond to high levels of fertilization,” so we know that it’s a freaking plant. Still, this one article about peaches and China from Clemson is well worth the read.
You knew it was coming, right?
¡SNACK CORNER!
We’re here to tell you about Newman’s Own Hint-o-Mint sandwich creme cookies. They’re like Oreos, right, only with a little mint flavor. Y’all, we were like, “Oh, we’ll just have two,” and then we ate 11 of them in one sitting. Well, two sittings. Still, we ate 11 and we wanted more. We’ve found them at Sprouts and Natural Grocers.
Also
-Take this with a grain of salt (boom, food phrase), but we hear that celebrated local pizza truck Bruno’s Pizzeria (which is the one people from New York shriek at you about whenever you dare to say you like pizza) might be expanding its little operation at the intersection of Cerrillos Road and Paseo de Peralta to become a bit more of a brick and mortar thing. This news comes to us from an anonymous source in whom we believe, but is not yet confirmable. We’d like to see it happen because we’re frankly confounded by the hours Bruno’s keeps. Like, sometimes you just have to luck out and happen by when they’re open.
-Railyard-based bar, restaurant and events venue Boxcar is counting down the days before it heads over to its new location near the Plaza. By the time you read this, only a few days in the original spot will remain, but from what co-owner Tate Mruz has told SFR, the new Boxcar will kick ass and bring back a little bit of the ol’ party-for-locals vibe to downtown Santa Fe.
-We’re hearing repeatedly good things about the food at Joe’s Tequila Bar, the new-ish cazsh bar/eatery within the in Inn on the Alameda. Apparently the tacos are something to write home about, and its inclusion on the Santa Fe Margarita Trail makes it...what’s the word? Ah, yes—fun.
-We know we’ve mentioned new Santa Fe commercial kitchen The Kitchen Table a few times now, but it bears repeating that founders Andrea Abedi and Hilary Kilpatric are SLAYING over there. We’ve lost count of how many local food-based businesses have joined up with the sprawling and amenity-laden biz, but you should know it’s a lot and that can only mean more food coming our way soon. Here’s a link to the kitchen itself; here’s a bit of history.
-SFR’s Best of Santa Fe party is coming up on Friday, July 28, and we’ll be celebrating the best our city has to offer as decided by you—the readers. The party’s pretty cool, too, and will have, among other things, some amazing food options: Jambo and Fusion Tacos. If you somehow didn’t know about these restaurants, both of which are about as popular as restaurants can be, now’s the time to learn. You’ll also find music and balloons and SFR staffers hanging out. We won’t be there because we don’t actually exist, but the other jamokes who work here will be there for sure, but mainly there’s the food part. Birria ramen and/or tacos from Fusion? Literally anything from Jambo? Oh, man, sign us up.
-Speaking of big ol’ parties, El Rancho de las Golondrinas’ 5th Annual Santa Fe Beer and Food Festival is coming up on August 5-6 (noon-6 pm each day) and will reportedly feature beer, cider and food from the best places around. The fest has kids’ stuff in mind, too, with cornhole and giant Jenga. Why are we telling you about this now, so far in advance? Because you’ll wanna get your tickets in advance according to the press release, and you can do that right here.
Listen at your own risk. No, seriously, Peaches says some SHIT in here.
More Tidbits
-Not so long ago, New York City passed a first-ever law that mandated delivery app drivers/bikers/human-freaking-beings be paid the city’s $17.96 minimum wage, but now the big apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, Relay and Uber are suing to not have to do that. Cool, guys, that feels really cool of you—NOT. Hahahaha! Bringing back “NOT?” Genius. Naw, but furreal, it sucks for these companies to do this.
-Normally we’re not super here for fast food trends like the Grimace (said like Grimachay) Shake or whatever, but IHOP pancake tacos? Sign us the fuck up. We’re talking specially-sized pancakes in folded form with brekkie stuff inside. Oh, God, we’re so into this we might even break the No IHOP Accord set down in 2001 during a harrowing time in the Kingdom of Santa Fe Super-Friends.
-An enterprising oenophile took heist movies to heart by drilling a hole into the roof of a Los Angeles wine shop, lowering themself in and stealing vino and liquor worth something like $600,000. The owner of Lincoln Fine Wines likened it to an Ocean’s Eleven sort of thing to outlet Insider-dot-com, which is weird as hell, because it’s obviously more like a Mission Impossible thing.
-Lastly in not-just-local food news this week, Eater-dot-com’s Jaya Saxena writes about Guy Fieri getting a little buddy-buddy with Trump at some kind of UFC fight in Las Vegas. Cool move, bro, now we feel even better when we tell people that your bowling shirts with the flame print makes us think you suck—turns out you just suck is why you suck.
-The New York Times gets into the hard-edged investigative game by exploring the concept of so-called “Girl Dinner,” which is, like, mostly little piles of things on plates that your or we might call “snacks.” The point is that it’s not a traditional meal of two or three items in generous portions, and word is that it’s inspired by medieval peasants somehow. Cool. Words don’t mean anything anymore. If you don’t believe us, look up the term “foodmood” and be amazed. And no, we’re not linking it, Gawwwwwwwd-uh!
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
In the print edition of SFR this week, staffers visited Rio Chama hoping for a stellar experience, and while the steak was reportedly quite good, something was not quite right about the experience.
Number of Letters Received
30
*We learned the mystery tube from last week’s Fork was a blueberry-infused cheese tube. Wow!
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
“Some Harvard professor said we should only eat six fries with a meal. Nope.”
*Yeah, get the shit outta here, Harvard!
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
“Re: oatmeal with whipped cream—along the same lines but a notch more indulgent, instead of making oatmeal with milk, scoop a lil’ ice cream into the bowl right before serving. Rum raisin is a good option, but (trust me here) so is cookie dough flavor!”
*This is actually from a co-worker, but we’re so down.
Peachy, but in the way that the peach emoji is really about asses,
The Fork
