The nectarines are also really, really good

For the record, I don't peel a nectarine. Only a peach.

Naked peaches

I'm now making pretty regular trips to Pike Place Market to get produce on the weekends. Its relatively inexpensive and now that I've found the best vendors the quality is just incredible. I'd been focusing on cherries, mushrooms, and apples until two weeks ago when Huan informed me that the peaches were pretty good. I feel like I have a fairly refined palate when it comes to peaches; my family would often be in South Carolina during prime peach season when I was growing up, and even though Georgia might be known as the Peach State, South Carolina more than holds its own.

So when the guy hawking peaches last week claimed that these were the best peaches anyone had ever had, I told him that I had had a couple of good peaches in my day. He cut a slice off his sample peach and told me that my order would be free if I could look him in the face and tell him it wasn't the best peach I had ever had.

I paid for my peaches.

Sadly, the State of Washington seems to be home to peach fuzz eaters. Again, I feel as if I come from peach country, and I can't seem to remember anyone eating a fuzzy peach. Peaches, like oranges and kiwis and bananas, are meant to be peeled. To this day it freaks me out when I see someone just grab a peach and go to town. Maybe this is one of those things where I'm a freak (since nearly everyone I talk to seems to eat fuzzy peaches), but if so, I'm a freak on a terrific moral high ground.

Peel your peaches. Please. At least in front of me.

Pigs

Strangely, this post has nothing to do with pork, or at least edible pork. It would seem that the pig is some sort of symbol of the Pike Place Market, despite the fact that the amount of seafood sold at the market is probably 10-15x the amount of pork sold at the market. It turns out that this is the 100th birthday of the Market, so there are all sorts of events building up to August 18th. Mainly this means that the Market is crazy busy during the weekend, making it miserable for locals like myself to go shopping (it really does have fantastic produce stands).

As part of the celebration they have put up these fiberglass pigs all around the city... I assume they are sponsored by various businesses who decorate them to represent their company. For those of you in DC, they're a lot like the Pandas that were in town a couple of years ago, only they aren't frequently vandalized.

Anyways, I think they are cool. So here are some pictures: