Everything is just peachy

Peaches are everywhere. Got jars, got peaches, got ’em canned for the pantry. I love seeing the “fruits of my labor” on the pantry shelf. Of course the farmers that grew them get a little credit. After smooshing through the first two boxes with Grumpy, I was kind of dreading the last two boxes. I've always done the following process:

• Wash the peaches
  
• Fill a stockpot with water to blanch the peaches (this loosens the skin so it comes off easily.)
  
• Dump into cold water
  
• Cut the peaches in half so we can pull out the pit and scrape out where the pit was.
  
• Put them into the solution of whitening so they don't go brown
  
• Rinse them and put them in a container with a lid
  
• Prepare the jars and a light sugar syrup
  
• Fill the jars
  
• Wipe the rims, put on the lids
  
• Process the jars in the canner
  

The problem was getting the pits out this year. Even though we have the freestone variety, the pits were just not coming out without smooshing the peaches all up. My brother Bob suggested we cut them in half before we blanched them so we could twist them off the pit (like you do on avocados). Duh. Why didn't I think of that? Wow. I can't even tell you how much easier that was. When you cut them first, pit them and then blanch them you don't have to do any scraping, there's no smooshing and you get beautiful halves. After blanching the skins just about fall off. So wonderful. I actually enjoyed the last two boxes and am looking forward to tomatoes next week. Out of four 32 lb. boxes I have 55 quarts. Enough for a quart a week for a year with a few more to add to a cobbler now and then. Makes for a beautiful pantry. Out to Taya's next week to do a few for her and Tawna's pantries. Stacie is really good with all this too - she and Tawna helped me so much last year. We'll have to get hers done next week too so she can really enjoy her cruise. We even muddled through a lot of apples last year. Not my favorite. I'll have to see if Bobby has any ideas to make apples easier. I love working on this stuff. Good times.