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10 October 2008

Peach Canning

Here are some pictures of us canning (ok-jarring) peaches last Friday. It was fun, but took us a long time.

Canning peaches is one of those pipeline processes where if you don't plan ahead, you may spend a fair amount of time waiting on something to finish before you can move on to the next step.

The process is like this:

1. boil the peaches for 60 seconds.
2. rapidly cool them.
3. peel and pit them.
4. place them in hot jars, add syrup (pure cane!), and apply seals.
5. apply heat for roughly 30 minutes.

I'm limited by the fact that my boiler only holds eight jars and the jars *must* be hot or they could crack (one did).

Overall, the process is fun, but incredibly labor intensive (not to mention hot and sticky). I don't think we really save much money either. We already had the jars and the peaches were free, but the five hours it took to produce roughly 23 quarts of peaches hardly make it time-economical.

But then again, that's five hours spent with Nicole--chatting about ourselves, our children, our future. Something I couldn't put a price on if I wanted to.

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