Completely kick-ass thing I did today:

Climbed a chain link fence (slight setback when almost ripped my finger off when my rings got caught on the top of the fence, but unhitched myself in time and escaped with just a few scrapes) and gathered wild (technically feral, but let's say wild) peachy-looking apricots from a tree that grows in one of those miserable public-managed nooks by the side of the road. This one is immediately to the south of the 90 freeway as it comes off of the 405. And let's just split the difference and call them peachcots, as they seem a bit small for peaches and they tasted particularly apricoty, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

The fruit were absolutely filthy from growing up down by the roadside, with no one to spray them down and with cars driving by all the time, but the tree was laden with lovely yellow...peachcots, and it seemed a terrible shame to leave them all there just looking pretty. So, I collected a bag full of them, and then felt silly when I discovered all that cool fence-jumping was unnecessary, as there's a hill and concrete wall that offer a much safer path for entrance and egress. Jumping up there next time will be the only (small) challenge--might need a stepstool, but 100 times easier than fence climbing.

Took home my bag of fruit, scrubbed them all fiercely with soap, water and love, cut the sketchy parts off of the more suspect peachcots and chopped up the rest. Then put them all in my beloved Griswold cast-iron skillet (.99 at Salvation Army thank you very much), combined the fruit with melted butter, white sugar and brown sugar, covered it up with a quick cobbler topping from Mark Bittman's invaluable How to Cook Everything, put it in the oven for 30 minutes with a final five under the broiler for browning, and actually convinced my very finicky, cobbler-hating husband to eat fruit I found by the side of the road and declare the whole thing "really good!"

Anyway, yay. The Fallen Fruit folks have another satisfied customer.

Damn. Hungry again. Off to cobble...