I started my week by going to my favorite local fruit stand, ALLREDS. I love these guys because their fruit is always good quality and I can get a box of seconds for $6. I know what you are thinking, how is that possible but they are usually the peaches that are bruised and sometimes under ripe, but no matter what the shape the peaches are in they are always juicy and delicious. I have no qualms with canning slightly bruised fruit.
My cute husband has been watching Allreds for the last 2 weeks waiting to tell me when they open and they finally opened so I zipped over there. The only peaches they had available were the which don't really make great canning peaches but I wanted to get a head start this season so I am not doing all of my canning after I have started teaching again. I bought 2 boxes of fruit and then I went to my favorite grocery store BUY LOW and got all of the fixins for salsa (since this was also in my week plan). While I was at BUY LOW they had a great sale on their pears so I
decided to get a bunch of pears to can as well (I know...ambitious!) I got home and got out my big canning pot because it usually takes the longest to get going. I filled it with the correct amount of water and got it on the stove to start boiling.
I then got the other pots boiling, one to blanch the peaches, one for boiling water to add to the peaches in the jars.
Blanching the peaches is an art because you can't leave them in the pot too long because if you do then the fruit starts to cook and goes all m
ushy. I had this problem a while back and I didn't get a very good batch. This time I was very careful. I blanched the peaches and then I peeled them. I then put them into the Jars which I had previously washed and had in the oven at 225 so they could be sanitary and warm (if they aren't warm they will break in the water bath). When the jars were full of peaches I added 1/4 cup of sugar and enough water to fill the jars til they are 1/4 inch from the top. I put on the lids and then put them into the water bath for 25 minutes.
I have had many bad batches where none of the jars seal but I was super happy that this time I was able to get all 21 jars sealed! Yeah!
The same day I decided that the pears needed to be done before they got too ripe. Pears are tricky because you don't want them too green but you don't want them ripe either. If they are too green they aren't sweet enough but if they are too ripe then you just get a mushy mess. The
pears that I got were on the verge of being too ripe so even though I was super tired from doing the peaches I decided to just get the pears done! (It helped the my husband wasn't home from work yet and my daughter fed herself pizza).
I started by blanching the pears. I was very careful that I didn't leave them in too long because pears will go mushy and you can't can them. Then I put them into jars in quarters. I added some fruit fresh so they wouldn't go brown. (I didn't do this last year and my pears went brown, they still tasted good, but just didn't look as pretty in the jar.) I only put 1/8 of a cup of sugar into the pears because I added the fruit fresh powder and just I processed them in the water bath for 25 minutes also.
In total I got 10 jars of pears and 21 jars of peaches. All in all I think it was a productive day!
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