Ok, so I really didn’t eat a donut.  Thought you had me there for a second, huh?

But, what I ate tasted even better.  This week I was treated to a sweet, juicy, delicious (and distinctly donut-shaped) variety of peach called the Saturn peach.  These little babies can be tricky to find, but boy are they worth it!

I am, admittedly, not much of a stone fruit fan.  Maybe it was all mouthfuls of peach fuzz, biting into peaches hard as a stones, and trying desperately to finish the tart or tasteless flesh when I was a kid.  The only peaches I had experienced had come from the grocery store and were clearly under ripe a majority of the time I tried to eat them!  Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical of trying this “new” peach.  But, when a client of mine brought them in raving about their taste, I decided to give it a go.  I am so glad I did!

Saturn peaches are known by several different names including doughnut peach, paraguayo peach, pan tao peach, saucer peach, belly-up peach, UFO peach or hat peach.  So, to avoid confusion or frustration if you can’t find the name Saturn peach, search for their distinctive shape instead.  These peaches are short, squat, about three and a half inches in diameter, and only about an inch and one-half high.  Their whitish-yellow skin is covered with a very fine fuzz and their flesh is nearly white.  They can be slightly more expensive their their globe shaped counterparts, but believe me, they are worth every cent!

Here are 5 reasons why you should go to the grocery store right now and try a Saturn peach for yourself.

1. They are in season.  A food is most nutritious and always tastes best when it is in season.
2. These peaches taste better than any other peaches I’ve tried. They’re sweeter, juicier and are lower in acid than other peaches.  No pucker mouth!
3. The pit doesn’t cling to the flesh, so it’s easy to pop out with your thumb.
4. The thin, red skin has little or no fuzz, so it doesn’t have to be peeled and you don’t end up with a face full of peach fuzz.
5. Their small size makes for perfect portion control, especially for those of us that have trouble controlling our sugar jones.  It is a perfect snack or dessert size and lends itself to being eaten out of even the smallest hands.

By choosing this rarer variety of peach, you are helping to preserve biodiversity and maintain diverse seed stocks for generations to come.  Saturn peach trees are frost-hardy, highly pest- and disease-resistant trees that are easy to grow in most areas meaning they generally require less intervention during the growing process.  The less we have to intervene with things like pesticides and insecticides, and the better suited the plants we choose to grow are to the environment, the healthier we and our environment will be!  Read more about heirloom food here.