The other day I offhandedly mentioned to Emilee's best friend's mom (Meg) that I would love to try canning sometime. She looked at me sort of surprised and said "Really? Well, come on over, I'll show you how!" They own several acres and have all sorts of animals and farm type things going on at their house...all three of my kids love to go over there and visit since it's quite the opposite of our "city type" living. They have an abundance of peaches ready to be picked right now so Carter and I excitedly accepted their offer and headed over this morning.
We got started picking about 20lbs of peaches...here's Carter eating a peach with one hand and holding up a just picked "perfect" peach with his other.
One of the many steps to canning...sorting the peaches and getting them ready for a quick dip in boiling water, followed by a dip in iced water, so you can peel them.
After peeling, they need to be pitted and cut and sprinkled with Fruit Fresh.
Then they need to be packed into the jars. This step is a tricky one I learned AFTER it was all said and done, as some of my jars came out not as tightly packed as they should be. Oh well, they should still taste yummy!
Next step is boiling the lidded jars...this takes 45 mins...and the time waiting is best passed by heading over to the canal that runs through Meg's front yard and floating the toy lego boats that were built by cute 4 year olds while Mommy was chopping peaches.
45 minutes is up and SUCCESS!!
The jars are done and set out to cool.
I had a blast today trying out canning...a huge THANK YOU to Meg for sharing her peaches and her time with us, and letting us make a mess out of her kitchen! And also to her daughter, Amy, who helped a ton with the peach peeling and with keeping Carter entertained!
And this picture wraps up my Suzy Homemaker Day. Not only did I hit the farm, pick and can peaches today...but I also put a whole chicken in the crockpot, ate some for dinner and pulled apart the rest to freeze for enchiladas later. And THEN I put the leftover bones/meat back in the crockpot, filled it with water and added seasonings and vegetables and now it's going to cook overnight making homemade chicken stock to freeze for later!
I'm feeling like a VERY accomplished housewife today!
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