A friend called on a Sunday afternoon around 2pm and said he had peaches for me and that they were a little on the ripe side and would need processed as soon as possible. Well, I guess it was time to learn how to can peaches! Fortunately when I picked up the pressure canner I got more jars and the Ball Blue Book which comes highly recommended by the way. I got mine for $2.99 at my local country store. It is well worth the info inside. Especially if you are a beginner like myself. I got the peaches home at 6pm and we had 7 quarts cooling on the counter by 9pm. Not too bad for the first time. 7 quarts may not seem like much, but each jar holds between 25 and 30 peach halves.
We blanched the peaches in batches of about 10 to slip the skins off, sliced them in half, scooped the pit and reddish flesh out and submersed them in a lemon water ice bath until canning time. The lemon did a good job of keeping the peaches nice and bright. There weren't instructions for pressure canning the peaches so I used the time for water bath processing instead. The blue book recommends a 30 minute time for the boiling water bath processing method and I later read that 10 minutes is sufficient in pressure canner, so I will remember that for next time. I tasted them for the first time last night and I thought they were pretty good. I highly recommend canning whatever you'll eat. It is satisfying and you have control over what goes in the jar. :-)
TTFN
B
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