Red State Green

My son loves canned peaches, so when I saw the listing for peaches in the co-op,

(cue dreamy music)

I thought of beautiful jars filled with perfect golden slices, layered ever-so-nicely, rows upon rows in my pantry …

That’s not how it went today.

First, I had the idea to get the skins off by putting them in boiling water then ice water. Which works really well, when it works. I used my sun oven to boil the water.

They tell you to use RIPE peaches for a reason, one of which is that if the peach is not completely ripe, the boiling water/ice water skin removal trick DOES NOT WORK, and you can boil and freeze that puppy til next Tuesday and the skin just won’t budge.

Next came the separating the peach from the pit, which is not as easy as you might think with a boiled, iced, peeled, lemon juice added (to keep from browning), slippery little peach. The perfectly ripe ones came away from the pit great. However, a high percentage of those had … well, worms. So I had to cut away the bad parts. Not too bad.

But if the peach wasn’t ripe enough, it was a fight to get the peach pit off, and sometimes what was left was more like mushy strips of peach rather than golden perfect slices. But I persevered, and after many hours, from what seemed like 12 pounds of peaches (half of a 25 pound box), I got …

… four pint jars.

Hmm.

Deep breath.

Well, so I put them into the pot and started the water boiling.

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A half hour later, this water is still not boiling.

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FINALLY it starts to really boil, and I time everything, and all is well. I have four jars of floaty canned peaches. I even heard one clink as it sealed shut!

And I had a huge bowl of lemony peachy mush, and a lot of extra syrup.

Heh.

Peach lemonade isn’t bad!