Peaches!

We have a 'Contender' peach tree in our yard.  This is it's third year to bear fruit and it's only 4 years old.  This year it was loaded, this picture shows only one branch.  I think we picked about 80-90 lbs of fruit!

I truly believe the best way to eat a peach is fresh, however we weren't going to be eating 80 lbs worth so I gave some away and we ate a many as we could possibly stand to eat and bake with and I preserved the rest. 

My counter looked like this for about a week, each time I'd get it almost emptied off I'd go pick again! 

This was the first time I'd used a canner alone and I felt like such a grown up doing almost everything solo! :)  First I tackled basic canned peaches.  And to be honest I must have read 15 different blog post on doing so and really can't remember whose I used. I think I just took information from all of them and went to work! I used a lighter syrup and between 3 different sessions ended up with 18 quarts and 9 pints.  We've eaten one so far and it was fantastic! 

I also made peach butter, raspberry peach jam, peach preserves all in half pints.  The peach butter is great on pancakes and waffles, the raspberry peach jam doesn't use pectin so it is a bit runnier but awesome mixed into vanilla yogurt (I like Chobani), and the peach preserves take awhile to cook down but they're great too!  It was fun to experiment and to have such great success canning made the week even better! I also froze quite a few slices on cookie sheet and then transferred to freezer bags, these I can bake with or perhaps just eat? 

I will say I didn't do much cooking during that last week in August and I had to recover for a few days afterwards but now that we are starting to open a few jars it was well worth the work!  As most things in life are.  Thanks for stopping in!