As mentioned in last week’s peach lemonade post and in our #canning play by play on twitter, we spent most of last Tuesday turning 1 bushel of gorgeous, perfect, marvellous Red Haven Ontario peaches from BizjakFarms into 29 jars of assorted canning goodness.  

I feel like this post is a little late as once I actually got a bushel of peaches into jars I was sort of done with the whole thing for a few days. There was some swearing and lessons learned but I think I’m ready to share now.

First things First, we went to the Leslieville Farmer’s Market to eat croissants and the last of our Monteforte CSA cheese curds.  I then moved on to driving the poor peach guys crazy with distracting chit chat and placed an order for a bushel of freestones (lessons from Well Preserved on this one) to be picked up the following week. I think half of twitter was at the market that day.

The next week rolled around. We went back, obtained a ridiculous amount of peaches, fed some to the babies, let everybody take some photos and then got  Ryan and Andrew to carry them to the car while I went & got more cheese curds.

So after eating a dozen and taking about 2000 photos it was time to get cracking. Or smashing as its now known. 

Growing up, canning peaches was one of the few “old fashioned” canning activities my mother did. In fact she has 4 pages of scribbly notes about it which is the 1980′s equivalent to blogging.  I bet there are photos too. I have fond memories of eating these and admiring them in their jars.

Our objective was to can peaches to eat all winter. It’s my seasonal depression defence strategy. Let me tell you, when you bite into a Niagara Peach in the middle of February life is good.

Really it’s simple and once we got going things moved smoothly. 
Start by preparing all your jars; we did this the night before. Dallas has a good run down of safe canning practices on her post about her easy-peasy co-opertive peaches.  We used 2 dozen 1 litre wide mouth Jars.

Next make up a light syrup of 1 part sugar to 2 parts water.  We used the organic stuff in a carton so it has a darker colour which really looks nice with peaches.  I think we used 4 cartons, something like 16 cups of sugar by the end of the day. We made a big pot on fairly low heat and kept adding to it as needed. Just keep to the ratio and you’re fine. 

You want to wash your peaches really well.  These were low spray peaches as organic are really hard to find especially in bulk. You want to wash off the fuzz and the pesticides. Peaches are always up there on the dirty dozen.

Next 

Then add slices of peach to suryp over low heat for 5 minutes. Prep your jars and start packing hot peaches into hot jars. Cover with syrup and leave a 1/4 inch head space.

Blanching and Peeling was a total disaster, greatly reducing the yield and quickly raising the panic level. These perfect lovely peaches were crumbling in my hands.

Our other near-disaster was not having a large enough pot. I have canned many things but never used the giant jars before; so there I was, with hot peaches in hot jars and Ryan running out to buy a bigger pot.  I love my new giant pot.

All in all, we have some lovely peaches and learnt some valuable lessons; always make sure you have a big enough pot (this is a lesson is optimism perhaps?) and never-ever-no-way-no-how bother with blanching or peeling your peaches; especially when there are approximately 120 of them.

PS these were the last 4 peach halves and we were out of jars so this is 1 peach in one jar.  I think they’re for lunch.

July 30th, 2011 Cottage chives and chioggia beets from Sarah’s garden.

July 31st, 2011 Nursing on the dock at the cottage.  It’s World Breastfeeding Week from August 1st-7th so take a second in the next few days to offer your support to a mother if your life. We have the same picture from last year but she’s a lot smaller then

August 1st, 2011 Catherine and I made Peach, Raspberry, Thimbleberry jam at the cottage. We really know how to have a good time.

August 2nd, 2011 Some Fava Beans all in a row.

August 3rd, 2011 Wonderful Ontario plums from a road stand in cottage county.

August 4th, 2011 Home from 30 days on the road just in time to harvest the garlic from the front yard.

August 5th, 2011 Visited Sarah & Lisa’s Garden & stole their pink swiss chard.

We’re busy preparing for Rebecca’s 2nd birthday party by making some of our favourite salads.  I am a strict mayonnaise hater and mustard lover so this is our family’s version of potato salad. 

It’s made with new Ontario potatoes, herbs from the garden and a hearty amount of yogurt and mustard.

2 pounds of potatoes
1 cup of organic yogurt
1/4 cup of chives 
1/3 cup of fresh dill
A few springs of fresh parsley
1 teaspoon of curry
1 teaspoon of dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon of mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon of salt
ground pepper to taste

Boil your potatoes for 10 minutes.  Cut them each in half.

Mix your dressing, that’s all of the ingredients except the potatoes and parsley.  Add to your potatoes and cover them gently.  Garnish with the parsley and Volia! Who says you can’t make friends with salad?

In the past I’ve used blue potatoes and its just gorgeous, the yellow of the curry looks great with the blue spuds.  Somehow I don’t have a picture though.  This time we’re enjoying a basket of fresh Ontario potatoes that I bought on Wednesday and bet were still in the ground on Monday. They are heavenly.

Here are last year’s blue and purple potato harvest that were promptly turned into this salad for her 1st birthday. 

We’ll be posting a few more recipes from this weekend’s celebration, just as soon as I actually get a minute to finish making everything, since almost 2 year olds apparently stop napping?! Really.