Peach Bingo!

The drive from Washington, D.C., where I lived for nearly a decade, to Atlanta, where I grew up, is a slog. I made the 11-hour trip at least a dozen times, and my homestretch harbinger was always the same: the Peachoid water tower in Gaffney, S.C. That coral orb grazing the skyline, the waning sun hovering just above it — that was my binary sunset. Never mind that I had a space opera’s worth of highway still before me.

On this last day of July, allow me to offer you a New Hope: There may be peaches on our horizon, but we are not yet in summer’s homestretch. It can feel that way, with vacations wrapping and school approaching and every Luke, Leia and Han prematurely eulogizing the season. But we’ve got a lot more driving to do. Might I interest you in a game to pass the time?

Save all the Peach Bingo recipes here:

Last week, we kicked off a month of Summer Veggie Bingo with corn. (Have you won yet?) Today’s card is a real peach. Cook your favorite row of three — sweet, savory, slurpable — to yell “Bingo!” loudly to no one in particular, cook all nine just to prove you can, or cook none at all and wait for the next card, no spoilers.

It might be taboo to pick a favorite child, but these are bingo cards, not tiny people. So I can tell you with glee that my most beloved row of the month starts with Hana Asbrink’s cold tofu salad with tomatoes and peaches. As the recipe title suggests, those are not lumps of burrata but silken tofu, giving the dish a vegan caprese character. Everything’s tossed in a soy-balsamic dressing and topped with a generous amount of basil and mint. It is perfect.

Then, I’m heading east for Alexa Weibel’s tomato and peach salad with whipped goat cheese. Does it look similar? Sure. Do I mind? Not in the slightest. That’s because it tastes wildly different. Here, Lex whips tangy goat cheese with a little heavy cream and lemon zest for a creamy base, and the fruit is tossed with thinly sliced red onion and a mustardy vinaigrette for a bit more bite.

And if you’d like to make it dairy-free, you can! Here’s Lex, from the recipe’s comments:

“I would totally recommend using a combination of soft tofu (for the cheese) and your preferred (unsweetened) nut milk for the heavy cream! I would beat the tofu until creamy, and add the nut milk one tablespoon at a time (you’ll probably want to use less nut milk than the suggested amount of heavy cream, since the tofu-nut milk mixture will already be thinner than the goat cheese and heavy cream), and season generously with salt and pepper.”

To finish, Melissa Clark’s easy buttermilk peach cobbler, easy bingo. She layers the fruit over the batter, rather than tucking it under biscuit dough, for a tender dessert that reads more like an effortless skillet cake. For my one teaspoon of choose-your-favorite flavoring, I’ll call upon almond extract to go with the browned butter, tangy buttermilk and sweet peaches.

How will you play it? I’m off to the beaches of South Carolina next week, and that bottom row — Ali Slagle’s barbecue vegetable salad; Vallery Lomas’s peach tea; and Hetty Lui McKinnon’s peach, cucumber and mozzarella salad with gochujang vinaigrette — seems ripe for the occasion. Like a giant steel peach, it is a beacon.