Gone are the days of our hometown diners, complete with the breakfast accouterments beyond our own cupboards. Jelly? Here are a few flavors to choose from. Milk? Whole, half or skim? Syrup? Four kinds! Right there on the table just in case you wanted a different experience on every level of your full stack of flapjacks. 

I miss diners. There are not as many as there used to be. And even the ones that remain seem stale by comparison to the golden glow of yesterday’s 5 a.m. farmer’s feasts. I took my girlfriend-turned-wife many a time to the Rileyville four corners diner. We could get fat on 20 bucks and somehow squeeze in dessert to boot. 

I had all but forgotten about the many flavored syrups until this week, when Mrs. Hill was processing the last of our peaches, making jams and canned halves. As she was peeling and sorting I noticed she was keeping all of the peels in the slow cooker. I asked her why she didn’t just throw them away or give them to the chickens. As it turned out she was going to make peach syrup. 

Two years ago now, we had gone crazy making a batch of maple syrup with her grandfather. We ended up making around five gallons give or take, and we still can’t seem to eat it all. But, as great as maple syrup is, sometimes a change of pace is just what old Doc Nostalgia ordered. When she cooked up this pot of peels I thought, well, it smells like peaches. Then she strained it and bottled it and chilled some fresh. I looked at the pink-orange sparkling jar in the fridge and thought, well that looks like it came from peaches. So I made up some thick fluffy pancakes, slabbed on some butter, and cracked the bottle for a good ol’ try.

Folks. When I tell you, I miss the good old days, there are a couple of reasons why. Yes, life was always simpler in the past. Yes, there were good things to eat cheap. But by golly it’s the peach syrup that graced my tongue right here and now in the present that makes the past glow all the better. 

I can’t honestly remember if I ever tried the peach syrup at the diners, but it was nice to know it was there. After trying my wife’s though, let’s just say there’s as much hope for the future as there are fond memories of the past. And the best part of that is that all the yummy food I get to have is a lot more valuable to me than the good food I’ve already burned through.

If you’re wondering how sweet it is, I would highly recommend it to sweet tooths and anti-sugar fanatics alike. It’s a natural fruit sugar with just a bit added. You can experiment as we did with adding less sugar to find a balance that works for you, but for us the sweetness was not overwhelming. It had a pleasant peach-forward flavor with little to no aggressive saccharinity.

The way out here in the kitchen we love when we can use the scraps to make even more scrumptious options. Why settle for one syrup when you can have two? Yesterday’s diner is today’s home kitchen.