Today I received my ten pound box of peaches from Full Belly Farm. Truly a beauty to behold. I picked them up after work and when I got home my wonderful husband was just finishing cooking dinner so that I would have a clean kitchen to work in. He stashed dinner in the oven and took the kids to the swimming pool while I started working. The first thing to do was to sterilize jars and make the syrup for the peaches.
Then I had to skin the peaches. The recipe I had said to dunk the peaches in boiling water and immediately transfer them into cold water, then the skins would slough off. Not even close. After the first batch resulted in a lot of peeling with a knife (which leaves a peach that doesn't look so great) I learned that I needed to dunk them in boiling water, and then wait for the water to come back to a boil before transfering them to the cold water. I got much better results - beautiful blushy smooth skinless peaches.
Cut the peaches in half and poke some cloves in them and then boil them in the syrup...Here's the first batch in the syrup while I wait for the water for the second batch to come back to a boil to do the skin thing.
At this point the husband came back home with two hungry kids. I was too involved in what I was doing to eat, so they ate while I started peeling the second batch. When the first batch was ready to come out of the syrup it went into a jar...
Two more batches like these and the final result is beautiful to my eyes. Ten pounds of peaches yielded four quarts of spiced peaches and another quart of the syrup which was left over. Number One Son is really looking forward to this winter, when we can open these and savor them with ice cream while remembering (and looking forward to) summer.
