Just like the good ol' days

A few days ago our home teacher brought a small bag of peaches over saying their peach tree was really prolific this year. He figured he'd be able to can a dozen or so peaches that would do for their needs the coming year. We hopefully suggested that he call us if he had extras on the tree and we'd be happy to pick them.


When he called us a few days later it was to offer us a bucket of already picked peaches. But that wouldn't make them any less wanted. It was Saturday afternoon and over 100 degrees outside. Our poor air conditioner was working on overtime and still couldn't bring the temperature below 84. We decided we'd wait until it got a little cooler.


Peaches are really pretty easy to can. First thing was to take the raw peaches and drop them carefully into a boiling water bath.

We boiled them about a minute, a little longer for the less mature peaches.

You want the skin to slide off easily but you don't want to cook the peach to mush. When you can't slide the skin off, you have to pare it like an apple.

Slicing the peach in half allows you to remove at least one half from the pit. Usually a little prying action with the paring knife pulls the other half away. We like to use wide mouth jars so you can artfully arrange the peach halves in the bottle.

After you can't get any more peaches in the bottle, you fill the bottle with a light syrup. We used 1 cup of sugar to 3 cups water. It was boiling hot when we poured it over the peaches. We then put the scalded lids and rings on the bottles and placed them into the steam canner.

The steam cover was put in place and the heat was turned up. We started timing as soon as the steam was coming out of the vent hole consistently.

Twenty-five minutes later we turned off the heat below the steamer, opened it up, and removed the bottles to a draft free place for them to cool down.

Somehow it just feels good to have freshly canned fruit that you did yourself (when it wasn't too hot outside.)