Welcome to Martha Mondays. If you aren’t familiar, this is an open project where every week, we’ll cook, craft or do a Martha project together and then post or comment about it. The Martha Mondays recipe for August 10 was Grilled Vanilla Peaches, from August Martha Stewart Living.

I’m posting my take on it below. If you made it, or get a chance to make it, post your results on your blog (feel free to use the Martha Mondays logo so it is easily identifiable) and leave a comment here with a link. If you don’t have a blog or don’t want to blog about it, feel free to leave a comment about how it went for you.

I thought this recipe sounded delicious on paper – and it was easy. The first step was buying the peaches. Folks, I am ready to throw my hands up in frustration about this! I am having the worst time with peaches. I’m buying local peaches. First,  I have to watch like a hawk to be sure the check out person does not smush them into the bottom of a bag or bounce them around over the scanner. Then half of them rot before they get ripe. It’s very frustrating and expensive!

I finally ended up with 8 peaches that were somewhat ripe. Martha says to halve the peaches. Well, the recipe calls for freestones. Our local peaches are not freestones, so I ended up have to cut around the pits. So my peaches are not as pretty as I would have liked.

You place the peaches on parchment, on top of foil (Martha does not want food to touch foil!). I brushed them with oil and lemon juice, then the brown sugar, cinnamon,vanilla, and salt mixture. I thought it was going to be yummy.

I wrapped up the package and Mr. MarthaAndMe grilled it for 15 minutes as directed. We opened the package and the peaches did not look very cooked to me. They were definitely hot though and there was a fair amount of juice, however.

I served them with vanilla ice cream as directed. The ice cream melted almost immediately since the peaches were so hot.

I served this dessert to a group of 10 at my parents’ lake house, but only a few of us actually sampled it. Everyone else was happy to just eat ice cream or the cake Teen Martha made (she’s been slowly working her way through the old Betty Crocker cookbook on the shelf – this week it was a delicious butter cake with chocolate frosting)! None of the kids would touch the peaches. My father was skipping dessert entirely that night, so he wasn’t involved. It came down to me, Big MarthaAndMe (my mom) and Mr. MarthaAndMe.

I wasn’t wowed by this dessert at all.  The peaches did not have a very strong vanilla flavor. Big MarthaAndMe commented that she thought the dish would have been much better if you brushed the peaches with the flavoring then laid the peach halves directly on the grill so they could get charred and have a real grill taste. I agree with her (mom’s are always right). This tasted like partly cooked peaches with ice cream to me.

I wasn’t in love with the recipe, but it was fun knowing others out there were making too! So I want to hear how it went for you. Did you try it? Post a comment and let us know! Haven’t made it yet, but want to? Go ahead. There’s no time limit on Martha Mondays. You can make it whenever you want and report back.

Want to do another Martha Monday? I’ll post the assignment for the next Martha Monday in a separate post. Hope to see you there!