Peaches

[Winchester]

We bought 1-1/2 bushels of peaches on Wednesday at the market. I worked with peaches pretty much all day yesterday....and I don't want to even see another peach for about a year or so. They were fairly nice peaches, but I had a lot of trouble with everything, it seems, related to the peaches. I got 11 quarts of canned peaches, three peach pies, one really large peach cobbler, and a smaller cobbler that we took up to Rick's mom last night when we visited.

I had to re-process two jars of canned peaches. The lids actually pushed up and dented during the canning process. One jar completely broke and I had peach halves floating in my canner. I thought that maybe I had those jars too full (with 1/2-inch of headspace), so when I re-processed them, I left 1 good inch of headspace. And the same thing happened. So those two jars are now in the freezer. They sealed fine and I heard pinging throughout the afternoon. But I'm not taking any chances....I tucked them in the freezer to be used later. 

The pies don't look that great...I have long fingernails, so it's difficult for me to properly crimp a pie crust. I had some trouble with it. Even with foil bands around the crust, the crust got too dark. And when I put the cobblers in to the oven, the large cobbler bubbled out over and created a huge burnt mess in the bottom of the oven. I had a cookie sheet, lined with foil below the rack with the cobblers, but (wouldn't you know it), the bubbling completely missed the cookie sheet and hit the oven floor. I let it go last night, got in there and cleaned everything up as best I could this morning. I'm cleaning the oven now...it's on a 3-hour cycle, so I'm hoping that will take care of things. I don't like having a filthy oven as it can be a safety hazard....I worry about fires.

So here's the results of my peach bounty yesterday:

Peaches.jpg

• Winchester
• Aug 9, 2015

The pies are wrapped and in the freezer. The canned peaches are on the kitchen counter and I'll take them to the basement closet this morning. The cobbler is in the fridge; what's left of it, that is,after baking and working with the peaches all day yesterday, there was no way I was going to cook anything for dinner last night. So I asked Rick if we could just have peach cobbler as our dinner and he was fine with that.

Oh, and look at the chair to the right of the table. As soon as I picked up my phone, Tabby jumped up on the chair...she wanted to make sure I got her in the picture, too! 

 

[margd]

Those pies look great to me! I wouldn't turn down a slice, that's for sure. What a tremendous amount of work. Back when I was canning, I never got anything else done that day, much less a lot of baking. You'll enjoy the "fruits" of your labor for a long time!

 

[Columbine]

That's really impressive Pam :nod: I'm very impressed. Those pies look great to me too

We buy gluts of fruit at the market this time of year too, but the most we manage is freezing it to use in fruit crumbles and crisps for the rest of the year (dinner isn't dinner for dad unless he has a proper comfort food style backed dessert.....though he will accept a steamed syrup sponge once in a while). I most often do a quick oat topping on account of time/tiredness....I'm fine with making pastry, its just that it feels like too much effort most of the time :anon:

 

[denice]

We didn't have fruit trees when I was growing up.  We went to a u-pick orchard every year for peaches and apples.  We always canned a lot of peaches.  We never made pies but my mother was from deep in the Ozarks and cobbler was huge with her whole family.  I have eaten a lot of cobblers but never a peach pie.  My father loved diced peaches with a little cream poured over them and peach ice cream.

 

[larussa]

Everything looks delish Pam.  Kudos to you, that took a lot of work and time.

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

What is that in the red plate on the right. Winchester

 

[stewball]

We bought 1-1/2 bushels of peaches on Wednesday at the market. I worked with peaches pretty much all day yesterday....and I don't want to even see another peach for about a year or so. They were fairly nice peaches, but I had a lot of trouble with everything, it seems, related to the peaches. I got 11 quarts of canned peaches, three peach pies, one really large peach cobbler, and a smaller cobbler that we took up to Rick's mom last night when we visited.

I had to re-process two jars of canned peaches. The lids actually pushed up and dented during the canning process. One jar completely broke and I had peach halves floating in my canner. I thought that maybe I had those jars too full (with 1/2-inch of headspace), so when I re-processed them, I left 1 good inch of headspace. And the same thing happened. So those two jars are now in the freezer. They sealed fine and I heard pinging throughout the afternoon. But I'm not taking any chances....I tucked them in the freezer to be used later. 

The pies don't look that great...I have long fingernails, so it's difficult for me to properly crimp a pie crust. I had some trouble with it. Even with foil bands around the crust, the crust got too dark. And when I put the cobblers in to the oven, the large cobbler bubbled out over and created a huge burnt mess in the bottom of the oven. I had a cookie sheet, lined with foil below the rack with the cobblers, but (wouldn't you know it), the bubbling completely missed the cookie sheet and hit the oven floor. I let it go last night, got in there and cleaned everything up as best I could this morning. I'm cleaning the oven now...it's on a 3-hour cycle, so I'm hoping that will take care of things. I don't like having a filthy oven as it can be a safety hazard....I worry about fires.

So here's the results of my peach bounty yesterday:

Peaches.jpg

• Winchester
• Aug 9, 2015

The pies are wrapped and in the freezer. The canned peaches are on the kitchen counter and I'll take them to the basement closet this morning. The cobbler is in the fridge; what's left of it, that is,after baking and working with the peaches all day yesterday, there was no way I was going to cook anything for dinner last night. So I asked Rick if we could just have peach cobbler as our dinner and he was fine with that.

Oh, and look at the chair to the right of the table. As soon as I picked up my phone, Tabby jumped up on the chair...she wanted to make sure I got her in the picture, too! :cat:

You can improperly crimp a cobbler for me any day Pam.

 

[stewball]

That's really impressive Pam :nod: I'm very impressed. Those pies look great to me too

We buy gluts of fruit at the market this time of year too, but the most we manage is freezing it to use in fruit crumbles and crisps for the rest of the year (dinner isn't dinner for dad unless he has a proper comfort food style backed dessert.....though he will accept a steamed syrup sponge once in a while). I most often do a quick oat topping on account of time/tiredness....I'm fine with making pastry, its just that it feels like too much effort most of the time :anon:

I don't know how old your dad is. I'll be 71 in a few days time and I'd gratefully accept a steamed sponge pud everyday thank you very much. Yum.

 

[stewball]

We didn't have fruit trees when I was growing up.  We went to a u-pick orchard every year for peaches and apples.  We always canned a lot of peaches.  We never made pies but my mother was from deep in the Ozarks and cobbler was huge with her whole family.  I have eaten a lot of cobblers but never a peach pie.  My father loved diced peaches with a little cream poured over them and peach ice cream.

I don't know what sort of apple trees you have in America but in our back garden in England we had a Cooking Apple tree!!!
I'd eat them dipped in sugar but we ate tons of apple pies, stewed apples, I don't know what cobblers are but mum made good use of those apples.
It was the job of my sister and me to pick up the rotten apples from the grass. :-(

 

[Winchester]

What is that in the red plate on the right. @winchester

That was just a smaller peach cobbler. I wanted to make a small one for Evelyn, Rick's mom. We took it up to her on Saturday night and she called Sunday morning to tell us that she really enjoyed it. She said she ate most of it Saturday night after we left and then she finished it up on Sunday morning for breakfast. 

I really don't want to see another peach for a while. 

But I am looking forward to apple-picking time! Just a couple more months or so. Judy, we have tons of varieties of apples here. When we get apples, I always take 6-7 different kinds of good baking apples and put them into bags; those will be used strictly for apple pies. I've always thought that the best apple pies are made from a good variety of apples, rather than just one kind. I've started to do that with good sauce apples, too, for Rick's applesauce.

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

Oh my, the talk about apples causes me to want to cook applesauce. We love it chunky. I have friends who live in the NC mountains and who go to the mountains. They know I want apples and somehow I always get some.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

My neighbors apple tree is loaded; so I've been thinking about them!  My mother has an apple tree; but it always comes out with really funky shaped apples.  I think I've heard that for good fruit you need at least 2 of each kind of fruit tree.  I'd love apple and peach trees!  

My MIL always slices up fresh peaches and freezes them.  They are so good over cereal partially defrosted!  And I'm not a big cereal eater!

I did a fresh peach cobbler once.  That was SO. MUCH. WORK. 

  It tasted great of course; but the work!  I have bought frozen peaches at the grocery store before; but they seem to all be from unripened peaches. They are way more tart than sweet.  

 

[Winchester]

I love apples, everything about apples and all kinds of apple foods. Yum.

Mooch, you can do a canned peach cobbler that's really good. I have a recipe here somewhere. When I get home I'll look for it. I've used it before in the winter before I started canning peaches and needed something peachy for dessert. Last year, when I made it, I used the same recipe, but used a quart of our canned peaches and that was delicious, too. Let me see if I can find it....it is easier than peeling all the peaches.

I don't enjoy canning peaches and the only reason I did it was because of Rick. It's such a hassle to throw the peaches into boiling water, then take them out and put them in cold water. Yeah, it helps the skins come off easily, but that in itself in a pain, I think. And then pitting them. Ugh. It's just a hassle the whole way 'round. I don't like doing them. 

 

[Kat0121]

Everything looks delicious and Tabby is adorable. I think she's wondering what to eat first!!! I made apple coffee cakes to bring to work today and my assistant Sophie was very interested in what I was doing. I offered her a small piece of apple but she declined. 

 

[angels mommy]

 I saw miss Tabby over there. She's probably thinking it all smells so good! "Wait 'till mom leaves, & I'm making a move!"   

  

 You did have quite a busy day.  YUM!  It all looks so good!   "I'll be right over!"  

 

 

[pushylady]

Wow! That looks awesome Pam! Your man is lucky to have you.
The most I do with peaches round here is gobble them quick as I can. We just demolished a delicious basket of fresh peaches yesterday. Sooo good when they're in season!

 

[Winchester]

Thanks! I think he's lucky to have me, too....and I tell him that 

I love peaches. But I love to just eat them. No finangling around with pies or cobblers or anything like that. Give me a couple nice big peaches to munch on and I'm a happy camper.

Rick, on the other hand, won't eat any fruit peeling at all. Apples must be peeled and sliced (and preferably sauced), peaches must be peeled and sliced. He doesn't like pears and I don't know when the last time was that I saw him eat a nectarine....never, maybe? Cantaloupes and watermelon must be cubed and seeded or he won't even bother to eat them...and he'd prefer to stay as far away from cantaloupe as he can. So pretty much the only way I can get fruit into that man is if I prepare it for him. It took him decades to eat a blueberry and when he finally did, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end. I thought his mom was going to have a stroke; she was that amazed that he even ate one.  He will eat blueberries now, but only if they're baked into a dessert: cobbler, grunt, muffins, etc. He does like Blueberry Buckle now. But he still will not sit down and eat fresh blueberries. He's difficult to get good food into sometimes. But I still try.

 

[Kat0121]

 
Thanks! I think he's lucky to have me, too....and I tell him that 

I love peaches. But I love to just eat them. No finangling around with pies or cobblers or anything like that. Give me a couple nice big peaches to munch on and I'm a happy camper.

Rick, on the other hand, won't eat any fruit peeling at all. Apples must be peeled and sliced (and preferably sauced), peaches must be peeled and sliced. He doesn't like pears and I don't know when the last time was that I saw him eat a nectarine....never, maybe? Cantaloupes and watermelon must be cubed and seeded or he won't even bother to eat them...and he'd prefer to stay as far away from cantaloupe as he can. So pretty much the only way I can get fruit into that man is if I prepare it for him. It took him decades to eat a blueberry and when he finally did, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end. I thought his mom was going to have a stroke; she was that amazed that he even ate one.  He will eat blueberries now, but only if they're baked into a dessert: cobbler, grunt, muffins, etc. He does like Blueberry Buckle now. But he still will not sit down and eat fresh blueberries. He's difficult to get good food into sometimes. But I still try.

My Husband was different in that he loved fruit but couldn't eat most of it unless it was cooked because of allergies. I guess cooking the fruit changes whatever it was that caused the reaction. He told me once that eating some cherries after getting home from the bar ended in an ER visit because his throat started to close up. His mother was the head nurse in the ER at our local hospital so guess who was on duty when he showed up. She wasn't very happy with him. He, in his impaired state, thought he could get away with having "just a few". He was wrong. 

He was allergic to a lot of things including all shellfish except clams and all tree nuts. That one made buying cookies, crackers, cereals, etc interesting. 

I love peaches and fruit like that but I won't eat the peeling either. Strawberries, mangoes, watermelon, pineapple I could live on. Especially when they are blended with a good vodka and a little ice. 

 

[Winchester]

Kat, I like your style! I think I'd like spending time with you. But I can't imagine having to be so worried about allergies like your husband was. That had to have been horrible for him.

Mooch, here's that recipe for peach cobbler using canned peaches. It's a good recipe for the winter when you're dying for a peach dessert.

EASY CANNED PEACH COBBLER                        

Fruit:                                              

29 oz. can sliced peaches    

1/3 cup sugar                                      

1/2 tsp. nutmeg                                    

1 Tbsp. butter or margarine              

1 Tbsp. lemon juice                          

Topping:

1-1/2 cups Bisquick

1  Tbsp. sugar

1  Tbsp. vegetable oil

1  egg

1/3 c. milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Drain peaches. In medium sauce pan, combine peaches with remaining Fruit ingredients. Cook, stirring, over low heat, until mixture boils. Keep hot.

In medium bowl, combine Bisquick with sugar; set aside. In small bowl, combine oil, egg, and milk. Make a well in the center of the biscuit mix and add the milk mixture, stirring only until dampened.

Pour hot fruit into a greased 2-quart baking dish. Drop the Topping, in 6 portions, on to fruit. Bake 15-20 minutes or until Topping is firm and golden brown. Serve warm with cream or milk.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

 
Mooch, here's that recipe for peach cobbler using canned peaches. It's a good recipe for the winter when you're dying for a peach dessert.

EASY CANNED PEACH COBBLER                        

Copied and saved! 

I could probably eat all that fruit Rick passes up for him!  I love fruit!  My son is kind of difficult with fruits.  Apples raw, cooked or juiced; do not sit well with him.  If I get him the fruit puree pouches they have out; I have to find ones made from pear puree. He will eat the apples; they just don't like him.  I get him to eat fruit; but sometimes it takes me feeding him.  (He is still a little guy.)  I think the only one he truly hasn't liked was the plum with is sour skin.  He used to be great with eating bananas at least.  But I think he Od'd on them because it's been a long time since he asked for one!