canning weekend

So last time, I mentioned that its been a bit busy around here. And last weekend, I added more onto my plate in the interests of preserving summer. I bought a huge box of peaches, big, beautiful Okanagan peaches.

And I had plans to can the whole box. And I did. Over two days I made canned peach slices,

 peach sauce, peach jam and peach chutney. And if that wasn't enough, while the canner was boiling away, I made some tomato jam and more dill pickles. The dill pickles was a last minute addition. The ones I made about last month have been sampled and 3 quarts have been consumed already and another 2 quarts have been given away. So I panicked a bit about my dwindling stocks and with the end of summer looming, I bought 15 lbs of organic cukes and added that to my canning weekend. On Friday night, waiting for my husband to come home, I put up 5 lbs of the cukes into dill pickle spears.

The following morning I started the tomato jam before soccer

and then after soccer came the peach chutney

and canning peach slices and I started peaches in the slow cooker for sauce.





Sunday I canned the peach sauce, made peach jam and pickled 10 lbs of cukes into dill pickles. Phew! But I get an enormous sense of satisfaction from my cupboard filled with jars full of summer goodness.



Peach Sauce

8 large peaches, washed, pitted and sliced

1/4 c water

Put the peaches and water in a slow cooker and cook on low until the peaches are soft enough to go through a food mill. Process the peaches until relatively smooth. Add 1 lemon's worth of juice to the peach sauce. Pack into sterilized jars, cap and process in a canning bath for 10 minutes.



Peach Chutney (from Canadian Living)

2 tsp vegetable oil

2 c chopped onions

1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp hot pepper flakes



1/4 tsp pepper

8 c sliced peaches

2-1/2 c granulated sugar

1 c golden raisins



1 c cider vinegar

In a large dutch oven, saute the onions in the oil and add the mustard seeds, ginger, cinnamon, salt, cloves, pepper flakes and pepper. Once the onions are softened, add the peaches, sugar, raisins and vinegar. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered for about 1 hours, until the mixture mounds on a spoon. Pour into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/2" headspace  and seal. Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.



  Peach Jam (adapted from Tea and Cookies)

5 lbs diced peaches
1 lb 3 1/2 oz sugar
juice of 2 1/2 lemons

Place the peaches, sugar and lemon juice in a dutch oven. Stir to a simmer over heat until a jam state is reached, skimming off any scum that forms on the service. Pour into sterilized jars and process in a canning bath for 10 minutes.

peach jam

I love peaches at their peak. So I loved this post from Tea and Cookies. So I unearthed the very old family canning pot from the garage, bought some peaches and some jam jars and waded in to making a batch of peach jam. I used 2 lbs of peaches (5),

1 lb of sugar (enthusiastically measured by T) and the juice of 1 lemon. I diced the peaches, added the sugar and lemon juice and left the mixture to sit while T and I went to the market.

An aside - it was Teddy Bear's picnic today at the market, so T brought along his zebra - he was 1 of 2 children brave enough to march in the parade around the market with their stuffie (although he hung onto me via my bag the whole time). After the parade, the kids got cookies and juice and there was a storytime session and then they could prowl for stuffies in the vendor stands - if they found a stuffie they got to keep it. T found lots - a pink whale, a small beanie giraffe, a panda, a bird, a hello kitty cat, a bear and a blue hedgehog. It has to be said that the vendors he plays peek-a-boo with every week did help him find some of the toys.

When we got home, T went to make a jungle for his stuffies and I turned my attention to the jam. I poured the peach mix into a large pot on low heat and stirred. I washed jars and put them in a low oven to sterilize and I tried to get some of the rust off the canning pot rack...without much success, so I'm going to rest the jars on caps. I found this post by tigress in a jam which helped. Tea's recipe said the stirring could take up to 4 hours, so I brought a chair in from outside and had my book and my tea while occasionally stirring the jam mixture. It smelt so divine. After about an hour and a half it was looking fairly jammy

and sure enough, when I tested it, it was jammy enough. I poured it into jars and ended up with 2 - 250 ml jars and 1 - 125 ml jar with a smidge left over which D inhaled as soon as he came in from work! I did the 2 250 ml jars in the canning bath for 10 minutes just to practise as based on D's reaction to the jam, they aren't going to last very long.

So back to the fruit stand tomorrow for me to buy more peaches.