Cook up some peachy culinary creations

People have been waxing poetic about peaches for centuries.

In China - where peaches originated - they were thought of as food of the gods, immortalized in painting, legend and song.

In ancient Rome, Pliny praised them as "Persian apples." In France, Louis XIV bestowed favors in exchange for peaches from the famed gardens of Montreuil.

Peaches spread to the New World via the conquistadors, and were beloved by many Native American tribes. Thomas Jefferson planted them at Monticello, and from there they migrated to the deep South and west with the gold rush to California.

There's no doubt that the United States produces delectable peaches, but there's also no doubt that for many of us, they are hard to come by.

Unless you live in a place where locally grown peaches can be purchased at a farm stand or market, you might do better using canned peaches.

The cooks at Mary Mac's, the legendary tearoom in Atlanta, know this.

The recipes for Georgia Peach Cobbler and Buttermilk Peach Pancakes in the restaurant's brand-new, eponymous cookbook call for either fresh or canned peaches.

This is the opposite of food snobbery; it is food pragmatism.

If you can get sweet, ripe fresh peaches, go for them; but if you can't, reach for the can.

And the cooks who created the recipes in "Mary Mac's Tea Room" by John Ferrell (2010 Andrews McMeel) know what they are talking about; they've fed legions of hungry Atlantans since 1945, along with celebrities like Richard Gere, Britney Spears, Cher and the Dalai Lama.

Hopefully, this summer will bring you some delicious fresh peaches.

But if the produce section offers only hard, unappealing peaches, head straight for the canned goods, and hold your head high.

• Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family" (Perigee, 2005). More at marialisacalta.com.