Smashed BBQ Peach Jam

When life hands you smashed up peaches and all your burners are in use for canning, its time to make Peach - vanilla - honey jam on the BBQ.

As mentioned in last week's post about our peach canning odyssey, I am never ever peeling another peach.

All pealing peaches does is take perfect lovely wonderful peaches like these...

 and waste your time blanching, plunging...

 peeling... 

only to end up having them go to total smashed up mush when you go to cut them.

It was so terribly sad that I'll show you this lovely picture of pre-smashed peeled peaches as I did not take one of the carnage.

I do pretty much all of our cooking out on the deck in the warmer months.  Our kitchen is small and the deck has much better light.  It also has the Barbecue.

Which is nice when you have a bunch of rapidly browning peaches, a full freezer, and no free burner on the stove as you are in the middle of canning a @#&*^@#! bushel of peaches.

The main danger of bbqed jam is that the wasps go crazy. As you can see I left the peaches pretty chunky.

Peaches are pretty high in pectin and set into jam quite nicely without adding very much extra sugar.  Almost all  fruit is also considered high acid so you don't need to be all that careful with your recipe like some other things (like tomatoes, or green beans).  

I simply added a little lemon juice to prevent browning and keep that acid level high, a teaspoon of vanilla, a cup of honey and a cup of organic white sugar, which was really an accident as I forgot we still had some of this wonderful honey. The ratio was around 25% sugar/honey and 75% fruit.  

I had been taught that jam needed to be 40% sugar-60% fruit but recently found out from a canning class at the local Mennonite Church that wasn't true.  As long as it's high acid fruit and there's enough naturally occurring pectin, the amount of sugar is purely dependant on taste.

Volia! A near disaster prevented! Delicious jam, slow cooked outside for the neighbours to smell. 

Some final notes: It took about an hour to set, then I jared it up and put in the already going waterbath for ten minutes.

Recipe: Honey Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins

These are some of of favourite muffins and we eat quite a few of them. We have slowly been switching to organic foods in our panty so beside the salt and baking powder, the ingredients we use are all organic.  The nice thing is that it makes no difference to your baking whatsoever. 

This recipe will yield 2 dozen muffins. 12 to eat right away with spoonfuls of jam and 12 to eat for breakfast with your family.

dry ingredients:

3 cups of flour

1 cup of uncooked oatmeal

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup of sugar

4 teaspoons of double acting baking powder

wet  ingredients:

¾ cup of soft butter

½ cup of honey (coat measuring cup with a drop of oil to help with pouring)

1 ½ cups of milk

4 eggs

additions:

2 cups of blue berries.  Frozen ones work wonderfully.

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine your dry ingredients.

Mix your wet ingredients.

Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredient ¼ cup at a time until fully mixed.  Honey is pretty magical stuff and it acts as a preservative in baking helping your muffins last longer.  We’ve been using local honey from our farmers market, the latest delicious jar from Bees Universe in Innisfil Ontario.

Fold the blue berries in to the mixture by hand.  If using frozen, dust them in flour by adding a teaspoon or so to the berries and shaking them up in a Tupperware container.  This will prevent you from making blue muffins.

Spoon into well buttered muffin trays and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Adventures in local food: Our visits to the Royal Winter Fair

This post is really one week late, but this week has been a little nutty, filled with Foodland Ontario videos, babies who attack with scissors and appearances on Etsy’s front page. 

The Royal Winter Fair takes place in Toronto for 2 weeks every November.  I haven’t been for a few years; I think first year at OCAD was the last time Ryan or I went. I have such fond childhood memories though; the goats (I love goats), food coloured chickens, little pieces of wool, and butter sculptures.  This year did not disappoint, we actually went twice despite the steep entry price.  

We took the GO train. I’m so glad I figured out that this was the way to do it.  Only two stops, a 20 minute trip, lots of room for Rebecca to move around, a view of our old studio, and baby’s first train trip.

Like at the farmer’s market, what’s really great about the fair is talking to the farmers.  On our first visit, Rebecca and I nursed with a goat-farming mother of 3 whose baby wore a bib reading “in case on emergency, feed me goat’s milk”.  Surprisingly, there are few places to nurse a baby while surrounded by engorged show cattle.  We talked about goats, gardens and empathy for the cows.  I wish I had gotten the name of her farm.

We also had a nice chat with a farmer who explained that the big cattle auction was that night.  Everyone was in high gear getting the cows ready.  Cow hair spray remains a mystery.  He also wanted to make sure Rebecca liked cows milk but said you could eat fish instead of beef if you liked.  Hilarious.

On our second visit we asked another farmer about that night and he told us that 1000 farmers and their families drank $10, 000 worth of beer, stayed all night with the dairy cows and there was dancing on top on the stalls.  Some of these calves went for $20,000.

Here’s a photo of a cow named Becca.

We met up with some friends and went into the petting farm.  Rebecca used her excellent dog feeding techniques to befriend the goats.  She also ate quite a bit of the feed.  Seems she's outgrown her soy-intollerence.

She also really likes sheep. Like mother like daughter, and fibre artist grandmother.  These photos are from both visits.

Here are some brand new piggies.

We went upstairs and bought dinner; delicious little British pies and quiches from Simcoe Ontario, more Montforte Goat curds, lots of veggies and talked to some more farmers.  We visited the award winning jams (Congrats Sarah) and the Toronto bee keepers.  We bought some honey comb and raw honey with bee propolis.  Can anyone tell me about this?  I’ve never had it before and have just been putting it in my coffee.  It tastes like sunshine coming through a small dusty crack in a wooden cottage.  Deeply satisfying.

We also saw all the giant vegetables and I picked up two giant pumpkin seeds.  We’ll try them in the front this year.  Anyone want to do a giant vegetable grow-along?

Santa was there on our second visit, which was a nice touch.  He had a real beard and everything. All signs are pointing to Becca really being into Christmas.

On our way out, we let Rebecca have some hay time.   Her I love Dirt button was a nice touch, thanks Gayla. 

A farmer saw us a declared that we needed a cow.

I took a bunch of photos of these prize-winning goats with their teenagers in front of the CN tower on the way out.  I’d love to send a copy to them but can’t find an address or email, so if you know how to reach Frankhaven Goat Dairy from Tesswater Ontario, please send them my way.