peaches

I planned on splitting one 20# box with a friend. Circumstances & misunderstandings left me with one and a half 20# boxes.

Starting early in the morning, I dutifully blanched 20#s in one day. It took hours just for that step.

Blanching is supposed to make the skins easier to remove. Ha! I'd say 25% of them were easy to remove. Maybe I need to work on my blanching skills. In any event, blanching 20#s of peaches in my tiny kitchen was quite the feat!

First up was cardamom peach pie filling. Then I went to my two favorite peach jams: peach cardamom jam, and peach jam with brown sugar and rum.

But I still had so many more blanched peaches leftover! So I dug into my fridge and found about 2 cups of raspberries that had been macerating in sugar for awhile. I used those to make a peach jam with raspberries. So much jam was made that day! Everyone is getting jam for presents. Maybe I'll take some jars to school and put them on the staff table with a "free to a good home" sign. I still have about 5#s left (I sent a few peaches home with anyone who would take them).

Let this be a reminder to me for next summer: small batch canning. Small batch. No one needs 30#s of fruit all at once.