Peaches.

Beautiful yellow round orbs. I think it is my favorite fresh fruit.
Sweet, fuzzy, extremely juicy.
A fruit in the almond family, yes a peach.

The good: This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Niacin and Potassium, and a very good source of Vitamin C.
The bad: A large portion of the calories in this food come from sugars.

Peaches have been consuming my life for the past 2-3 weeks. They were EVERYWHERE in my home. The entry way, the refrigerators, the counter tops, the garage, the laundry room, the freezer....ahhhhhhhhhh.

I made spiced peaches, frozen peaches, peach sauce, canned peaches, peach jam, peach cobbler, and peach crisp.

We had 3 trees that over produced. We had literally 100's of pounds of peaches.  In addition to all the canning and freezing and cooking I did, I also gave peaches to friends, family, coworkers, the church, and people walking down the street. OK so maybe not to people down the street but I did give 150 pounds (yes you read that right) to the local food pantry.

I'm tired and there are two fully loaded apple trees staring at me every day begging me to lighten their load.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Canning!

I thought for today's blog I would share some photos of all the hard work I do in my spare time. OK, so it takes up ALL the time that I am not at my day job earning money, or running around with the children... I have to note that hubby has been very helpful in this endeavor so I can't take all the credit here.

Sitting back and looking at these photos makes me think - wow we really do a lot of work to enjoy this tasteful food. We plant, tend, harvest and process it all ourselves.

These are by no means "professional" photos but I do my best. So now sit back and enjoy.

First, we have some pickle relish. I love all the colors in one jar.

 

Here we have a new jar of peaches canned in a honey sauce. Since everyone is yelling about sugar these days and how honey is more natural, I thought I would try a batch or so and see how they turned out. I have yet to taste them but they sure look pretty.

Here we have some canned tomatoes and onions. It is a nice bright red that contrasts well to the previous jars.

 

These are dill pickle slices. I usually do dill refrigerator pickles but we have so many cucumbers this year I had to branch out and can some of them as I ran out of refrigerator space. So picture about 20 jars in my garage refrigerator in addition to all the jars I have in the basement.

 

 

This is peach sauce. It is just like applesauce only you use peaches instead of apples. Can I say Y-U-M in a jar? I have to ration out a large quart jar for dinner so everyone gets a taste. I am sure you could use this in baking also but ours never gets that far. It is a great way to use a lot of peaches at one time which our trees deliver.

This is another one of my pride and joys. This is seedless blackberry jam. I planted some blackberry sticks a few years ago and they have gone wild! They produced a lot of berries this year so with one batch I made this jam.  Isn't the color beautiful?

This last shot is of pickled beets. I know a lot of people do not like beets but I happen to love them, especially pickled. Some years they don't grow well and other years the rabbits eat them so to get enough to can was great. Plus this year we tried beet greens just to eat fresh. They were pretty good and I may do that again next year.

I don't think I could choose which canned product is my favorite. I pretty much love it all or I wouldn't do it.  The next two shots are more an overall view on my basement shelves of the bountiful harvest.  We still have apples to do this year so I will have to squeeze them in somewhere!!!

 

Boy this makes me a bit hungry looking at everything...