- Playing
- A Cook's Notebook: Peach Pit Jesus
- From
- Ali Berlow
A Cook's Notebook - reflections on food and cooking in our kitchens and in our lives - airs weekly on WCAI/WNAN - the Cape & Islands NPR stations.
Peach Pit Jesus aired on WCAI & WNAN, Sept. 3, 2003 & July 28, 2004
PROMOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
Accompanying recipes available at www.cooksnotebook.com
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
A Cook's Notebook - reflections on food and cooking in our kitchens and in our lives - airs weekly on WCAI/WNAN - the Cape & Islands NPR stations. Peach Pit Jesus aired on WCAI & WNAN, Sept. 3, 2003 & July 28, 2004 PROMOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST Accompanying recipes available at www.cooksnotebook.com
2 Comments
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Review of A Cook's Notebook: Peach Pit Jesus
This piece isn't innovative or cutting edge--it doesn't need to be. It doesn't need any additional sound or music. It is a simple piece of good storytelling, plainly told. In describing a recipe for canning peaches, she describes the method for removing the fruit's skin as "like peeling skin off a sunburn." With language like that, any production aesthetic added to this piece would just get in the way of it's powerful words.
While this piece is a dead-ringer for the style of commentary you'd hear in an NPR magazine, it is refreshing to see a piece like this produced with the restraint necessary to highlight the natural beauty of the story. A few other notes: Seasonal: The producer indicates this would be good for August. I'd expand this to fall use as well. Even though it deals with a summer peach stand and canning--listening to it now (in October), it still feels topical. I'd see this as being a useful piece from mid-July though October. Music: The description mentions theme music, but the piece is unscored. |
Transcript
The woman told me she'd seen Jesus in a peach pit. "It's true" she said, "and well-documented" nodding to the yellowed newspaper clipping taped to the side of her fruit stand. There it was - a picture of her blessed neighbor - a Miss Lorraine Mills, holding the pit in one hand and pointing to it with the other. Apparently, Jesus revealed his image from out of the dregs of her homemade peach wine. Once the word got out, believers came from all over to see His face in the crevices of that peach pit. But that was years ago and the people have stopped coming. Besides, Miss Lorraine's been dead now for quite awhile and rumor has it she took the pit with her. Now it's mostly tourists who pass by this roadside stand - on their way to resorts like Hilton Head, off the coast of South Carolina. "It's where they flock to" said the fruit-lady "for the golf courses and the swimming pools".
Every s...
Read the full transcript
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Hans Anderson
Posted on February 22, 2007 at 12:41 PM | Permalink
Review of A Cook's Notebook: Peach Pit Jesus
This piece takes off with a great first sentence. A woman witnesses a peach pit that looks like Jesus, quits drinking and examines all of the peach pits she runs across for the look of Jesus. The author goes from seeing a picture of the peach pit Jesus lady to making her own batch of eight jars of (eventual) Peach Wine, the color of honey with blobs of peaches pushing up against the glass of the jars as it ferments.
This is a fun listen. I would have put "Light" as a tone, but if it had background music, it would have been all minor chords. It's not a sad piece, but it feels like a rainy day made happier by a glass of peach wine. I'm going to go google a recipe.