project365: week thirty seven September 17th, 2011 - September 23rd, 2011

Whoa! Week 37 of project 365 and the blog has been going strong for a whole year.  Thanks everyone!

September 17th, 2011 Self Portrait while Apple Picking!

 September 18th, 2011 Golden Swiss Chard at the farm.

 September 19th, 2011 Back in the city enjoying a drink in a bar.

 September 20th, 2011 Spent my birthday taking pictures of apples and pears.

 September 21st, 2011 Hydrangeas from the garden dried for Becca's bedroom.

 September 22nd, 2011 Beans from the garden for dinner.

September 23rd, 2011 Beets, carrots and mint from the garden for dinner.

project365: week thirty six September 10th, 2011 - September 16th, 2011

 September 10th, 2011 We were up to our in ears in canning tomatoes.

September 11th, 2011 The Tomato Queen came up with this out fit all by themselves.

September 12th, 2011 A teaser gift of heirloom apples and pears from the orchard we raided this past weekend.  Photos to come soon!

 September 13th, 2011 The best part of nursery school is the walk home through the park.

September 14th, 2011 Some Peacock Purple Beans form the garden.

September 15th, 2011 Rebecca went carrot picking and came up with this lovely little golden beet.  We ate it for dinner

September 16th, 2011 After driving along the Apple Route, we arrived at the farm to go apple picking for our 5th wedding anniversary.

Wordless Wednesday: Wonder Who she Gets That From?

hmm, seems someone has started photographing things before she eats them.  Wonder what that's about.

How to Can a Bushel of Peaches in 7 hours with Some Swearing, a New Pot and 29 Jars

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 Bizjak Farms 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 

Blanche

Peel (we'll get back to this)

Cut (we did some halves and some quarters)

As you cut the peaches, sprinkle lemon juice on them to prevent browning.

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.

We processed for 25 minutes but processing times will depend on where you live and the size of your jars.

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.

2 large baskets were reduced to 7 litres of ugly frustrating peaches.  We quickly moved on to not blanching or peeling, leaving some in halves, some in quarters and had great results.  I will never ever peel another peach and haven't a clue why all the instructions and recipes I looked at were all peeling peaches.  What a mess.

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.

project 365: week thirty three: August 13th, 2011 - August 19th, 2011

 August 13th, 2011 Yellow Pear Cherry Tomatoes.  One of our favourites.

 August 14th, 2011 Visiting a friend's pool.

 August 15th, 2011 Rebecca has been asking us to draw things for her.  Mostly A, B's; birds; cars and fruit. She gets mad if you do it wrong.

 August 16th, 2011 She's pretty good with a drill. 

 August 17th, 2011 The tomatoes are really coming now.

 August 18th, 2011 A whole morning spent photographing the tomatoes, then eating them for lunch.

August 19th, 2011 Catherine and I picked these this morning.  I love August.

Wordless Wednesday: BBQ Pizza for Rosa

Grow your own tomatoes and BBQ your pizza! You'll never look back.  Instructions for grilling pizza can be found here, in one of our very first posts.

project 365: week thirty two: August 6th, 2011 - August 12th, 2011

 August 6th, 2011 Ontario Peaches are in season.  I'm taking a class this week in canning peaches and will be buying a bushel at the farmer's market tomorrow.

 August 7th, 2011 Rebecca is the life of her 2nd birthday party.

 August 8th, 2011 A little photo shoot on her actual birthday.

 August 9th, 2011 Visiting the neighbours and looking terribly grown up.

 August 10th, 2011 Our dwarf sunflowers are in bloom.

 August 11th, 2011 Dog cuddles.

August 12th, 2011 THIS IS IT! The first tomato of the season! A Brandywine!

project 365: week thirty one: July 30th, 2011 - August 5th, 2011

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.