As I’ve said before, one of my very favorite things about living in Pennsylvania is the local farms and orchards. Right now we are starting to see corn, apples, and peaches.
TONS
And TONS
of big ol’ peaches
(Hey, that’s about the size of the baby in my belly)
Yesterday I took the kids to Brown’s, my favorite local orchard, and bought a box of peach seconds. (Seconds are bruised or over-ripe fruit that they sell you at a large discount. They are great for canning.) Then I got home and saw that another orchard was having a great one-day sale on their seconds as well. My friend Korie kindly picked some up for our family while I was at my ultra sound appointment.
So now I have about 80 pounds of peaches (which I only paid $30 for, a big score considering that our grocery store is selling peaches for $2/lb this week. That’s a $130 savings.) The catch is I have to process them immediately or they are going to go bad fast, being seconds and all.
So far I’ve got 8 half pints of peach butter finished that I made using this Crockpot recipe. For the rest of the day I’ll be slaving away canning slices in syrup, jam, and maybe peach salsa. Any other peach canning recipes you’d care to share?
I’m also going to try my best to duplicate my Mommom’s peach cake recipe, which I think is just her hot milk cake with peaches baked in and topped with cinnamon sugar. If it turns out I’ll share the recipe.
This is my first year canning. It’s a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding and it does save a ton of money.
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That’s awesome! I’ve never heard of that orchard… maybe I’ll have to look it up! Do you have an email address? I was going to ask where you live, but then realized that I don’t put that out there, so maybe you don’t either… but on email it’s safe!