Canned peaches are perfect to keep on hand throughout the year for snacks, salad toppers, homemade ice cream toppers, and a variety of other uses. This recipe for canned peaches omits sugar, and uses cinnamon, all spice, and cloves to add flavor instead.
“Peaches are a favorite of mine and I’ve passed it on to Munchkin. While Hubby can take it or leave it a nice ripe peach can have me drooling worse than Pavlov’s puppies. Just a hint of that peachy scent will have me careening through the grocery store to the produce section, knocking over displays with the cart and making Munchkin yell “wheeeeeeee” till I screech to a halt in front of a mound of rock hard tasteless fuzzballs. Honestly, other than the smell they aren’t real peaches but most years I’ll give in a buy a pound or two and then grumble when the best part of the fruit is the smell. Usually I stuff myself with fresh picked local peaches till I can’t stand the sight of them (as if this aversion will somehow carry over into, say, January). I’ve tried freezing in the past and didn’t care much for the change in texture (though they made great smoothies) so this year I decided to stop being scared of Ball jars and to give canning a try.
As a kid I used to help my grandma and mom can all summer long. We’d spend a weekend picking fruit and then all week would be washing, peeling, chopping, and hauling. And the whole time us kids would be washing and peeling and pitting we’d be told to stay far away from the pressure cooker, how it could explode and kill us all if we messed with it. Needless to say we never messed with it-in fact, we’d be ordered out of the kitchen when it came time to load or unload the cooker. Fast forward 20 years and I’m still terrified of pressure cookers! But while wandering the internet I discovered another form of preserving: water bath canning. Basically you fill your jars with yummies, drop them in a pot of boiling water, cover it, and let it cook for a prescribed amount of time. Remove the jars and wait for the lids to pop. Hmmmm….sounded easy.”
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