Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Canning Peaches

I have watched, and yes, even helped, my grandma can peaches lots of times. She does it perfectly every time. She left me with the impression that it was easy to get perfect, beautiful peaches. So, since our trees were dropping peaches like crazy, we decided it was time to try our own hand at canning peaches.
Which of these does not belong?
The first batch went off without a hitch. Brent helped me do the whole process. They were very pretty peaches. But, unfortunately, there were still peaches to can. So, I spent the next day trying to squeeze as much canning into my day as I could, around taking care of Sam, playing with Sam, teaching my classes, and so on. So, it was around ten at night, the sink was half-full of peaches that had been sitting there since sometime in the afternoon. I continued peeling and cutting them up. (I already had two or three jars filled with sliced peaches.) And it just got later and later. I needed to make the syrup and I just thought, there is no way I'm going to get this all the way finished tonight. So I decided to cut up all the peaches and get the jars filled. Then I covered them and went to bed.

The next morning I was shocked at how ugly they were! I doubted whether it was even worth finishing the project. But, following the advice of my ever-knowledgeable mother-in-law, I made the syrup and canned the peaches. Most of them turned out alright, but there were two jars of UGLY peaches. They are the most appalling sight I've seen. Fortunately some turned out nice.

Canning lesson learned: Air is bad for cut peaches (and most fruit I've found)
Life lessons learned: Don't procrastinate. It's always better to finish a job you start.

2 comments:

Leah said...

mmm, can you please send a jar to your friends in Colorado? :-)

Anonymous said...

Oh, the lessons we learn! Peaches turn dark; raspberries dry up and wither; green beans get too big and tough; cucumbers can only be used to float as boats down the ditch; all if you wait too long. (I don't know if you've learned all of these lessons, but I have at one time or another. I taught with a girl once who had an even worse experience with peaches. She put her last batch on to cook at 10:00 P.M. and sat down to wait for them to finish. She fell asleep and much later she woke up to a very loud explosion. The water had boiled out of the cooker and she had bottles explode. She spent the next hours cleaning peaches off the ceiling! Love you, Grandma