Homing in on which crop is fleeing fastest, I've had lush, fragile, irrevocable peaches on my mind. But then I often do. Native South Carolinians and Georgians, of course, have a near obsession with this fruit: Peach ice cream is the only flavor, peach cobbler the only pie, peach butter and never apple on biscuits and toast. Peaches in winter were the prerogative of royalty until recent times. . . . Now we can freeze up a big batch fairly effortlessly and decide in the calm of late autumn just what to do with them – jam, chutney, ice cream, pie, or simply a luxurious dish of peaches and heavy cream.

A “chicken in every pot” is one political promise that has come all too true, at least in the United States, where chicken is about the cheapest protein going except for eggs. Chicken, achingly available in every place and season, is no longer universally regarded as a treat. To many, it’s more of a duty — either to waistline or bottom line.

Mussels are another local glory found on local menus. At Bobby Van’s, they are served “mariniere” (simply steamed in wine and herbs) year-round. But there are so many ways to serve these cheap, easily cooked shellfish: cold as a first course with various sauces or in soups or hot entrees.

The Neapolitan pie, hardly known in this country before the 1930s, must certainly have overtaken the hot dog as the nation’s number one favorite snack food. According to scholarly research conducted in the ’50s by the lat Richard Gehman, one Frank Mastro from Bari (not Naples) is credited with popularizing pizza outside the Italian neighborhoods in New York.