Well, as I’m sitting in our home office this evening, I can tell that the end is nigh. It’s raining. Kind of a lot. Again. *cries* I don’t know if I’m actually going to get any tomatoes this year or if the ones on the vine will just spit and/or get covered in mold. Maybe some kind of plastic sheeting is in order this weekend. This is so not cool!

Thankfully, I’ve taken some evasive measures.

We picked these peaches when our friends were here to visit. We got our huge boxes home and realized that they were VERY ripe, and needed to be used immediately. You may have seen our bellinis from this same peach-picking. There were a lot of peaches in our food that week. Our guests were kind enough to do a hard morning of work with me, peeling and chopping the peaches for canning. We sent them home with some jars.

I can’t get over how beautiful the peaches look. It makes the hassle of preserving worth it. (Oh, and the eating is nice, too).

In fact, I’m really looking forward to opening up a can of these in January and being quite pleased with myself. Nice try, winter, but I’ve got a little bit of summer all bottled up.

Here’s what you need:

About 3 medium peaches per pint jar (they are much easier to pack when they’re sliced!)
Sugar
Water
Ball Fruit-Fresh Produce Protector

The longest part is prepping the peaches. You’ll need to wash them, then peel them by scalding them in hot water for 20-30 seconds. The skin should come right off after that! Pit them and cut them into wedges, then treat them with the Produce Protector magic.

Pack tightly into jars, and then eyeball about how much water you think you’ll need to cover the peaches in a simple syrup. Heat the water in a stock pot and dissolve some sugar into it to create a simple syrup – how much sugar you want is up to you, but a light syrup will work just fine.

Once dissolved, ladle the syrup into the cans and use a knife to go around the edges of the jars to get rid of any extra air. You’ll be surprised at how much everything settles! We had to do a second round of syrup to make sure that we had proper (1/2 inch) headspace.

With a clean, damp cloth, wipe down the rims of all of the jars. Top with two-piece lids and process in a hot water bath for 25 minutes (30 for quarts).