I write to you now from a new home! In mid-July, Brad and I packed up our lovely Ohio apartment, left our jobs, and drove nearly 1300 miles across the continent to Colorado. It’s a domestic destination I’ve had for a long, long time: having spent eleven years away, I’m finally living back in the land of dry air, big skies, and seemingly endless sunshine. And our new apartment, full of windows and light, has the view to prove it.

It’s so great to be back!

And spectacular vistas aren’t the only benefit Colorado has to offer. It’s peach season here, and Palisade, Colorado is famous for growing wonderful peaches. They’re so perfectly delightful raw — juicy and cool and bursting with flavor — that I can rarely justify breaking them down for cooking. But I’ve been on a fruit crisp kick in recent months, so I thought I’d give one a try.

Originally, this recipe was designed for halved peaches, with their skins, and with a buttery almond mixture smushed across the face of each before baking. The peaches form their own little baking dishes this way, and there’s no hassle of peeling or slicing. However, I found the peach skin to be someone irritating, so I gave it a shot in a more traditional slices-of-fruit-buried-by-crumbly-goodness format. I definitely prefer the latter.

Even with the slicing, this recipe is outrageously easy. Almonds, sugars, oats, spices, and butter are whirled for a bit in a food processor. Peaches are blanched (so the skins slip right off) and sliced. Crumble is crumbled. Then, 45 minutes in the oven while you do other things.

The result is a layer of warm peaches that hold their shape topped with a slightly caramelized, slightly crispy almond crumble that compliments the fruit below perfectly. This particular recipe is for a small batch (I only had 5 peaches on hand), but it could easily be doubled or tripled if your baking for a crowd.

Served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream, you’ll ache for summer to last all year long. Or at least peach season, I suppose.

Peaches with Almond Crisp
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

5 ripe peaches
1/2 c raw almonds
2 T white sugar
2 T dark brown sugar, packed
1/4 c rolled oats
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp sea salt
3 T unsalted butter, cubed and cold

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8″x8″ baking dish and set aside. Blanch peaches by dipping them in boiling water for 30 seconds or so and then submerging them in ice water. Peel the skins and slice. Spread the peaches evenly in the baking dish and set aside.

Pulse almonds and white sugar in a food processor until just a few small pebbles remain. Add brown sugar, oats, cinnamon, and sea salt and pulse a time or two more. Add butter and pulse until mixture forms buttery clumps. Loosely sprinkle the almond mixture over the peaches.

Bake for 45 minutes. Serve warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or lightly-sweetened whipped cream.

This dish came out of one such rooting. An excess of white rice, leftover almonds from my holiday toffee-making, a can of water chestnuts, and chicken and peas from the freezer, seemingly disparate parts, became something great together as this Almond Chicken. With the addition of a green onion and a bit of sherry and soy sauce, it’s a quick meal that requires only a few minutes of stir-frying and a fluffy bed of rice.

I know that January, for many people, is synonymous with cleansing diets and post-holiday de-cluttering. For me I’ve added in the goal to focus on using up foods from my pantry. My tendency, especially since starting this blog, is never to make the same thing twice so I always have something new to share with you, which sometimes causes me to abandon my dry goods for excesses of fresh produce or obscure ingredients.

This dish, if anything, has reminded me that there’s a lot of good stuff hiding out in my narrow kitchen cabinet. With a little planning and creative thinking those random ends-of-this and half-packs-of-that can come together for a dish that is filling, flavorful, and new.

Almond Chicken
Adapted from Appetite for China

Serves 3-4

3 T canola or vegetable oil
12 oz skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into 1″ pieces
1 egg white
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cornstarch
8 oz container sliced water chestnuts, drained
1/2 c frozen or fresh peas
1 scallion, chopped
1 c whole almonds
3 T soy sauce
2 T cooking sherry

Heat vegetable oil in a large frying pan or wok over medium heat. Chop chicken into one-inch pieces and combine in a bowl with the egg white, salt, and cornstarch. Mix well with a fork and set aside. Chop the scallion, drain the water chestnuts, and measure out the almonds, peas, soy sauce, and sherry: the meal cooks quickly once you begin.

Dump chicken pieces into the hot oil and sauté until it begins turning golden brown on the outside and the chicken is barely white all the way through. Add water chestnuts and sauté for another 2-3 minutes. Add peas, scallion, almonds, soy sauce, and sherry and cook, mixing often, for another 2-3 minutes.

Serve over steamed rice.