Peaches: Past and Present

I have something my grandchildren do not: memories of my grandparents involved in my everyday life.

There are many reasons this is so. My grandmother worked at home and church and not for a salary, my grandparents lived ten miles from my home instead of 200+ miles away. These are two of the differences that come to mind.

Whatever the reason, though, I am mostly a holiday Gramma. I appear at birthdays and tend to have a box of gifts saved for the moment from holidays that I have missed. My youngest grandson is turning four and the 22 months of Covid-19 quarantine represents a huge chunk of his life during which we were apart.

I mused these differences while I studied the half-bushel of peaches my husband brought home. Freestone peaches; the best to use for cooking and canning as the pit easily separates from the flesh of the fruit. We were going to can these peaches, mostly, and I had plans for jam, as well as a small surprise with any that may be leftover. This was how we would spend the first day of our Labor Day holiday weekend.

Although it's the second year for our garden, and I had broken in the canning kettle with tomato sauce, tomato juice, and crushed tomatoes over the ten days leading up to this moment, I was very unsure about the success of our plans. Or rather, I suppose I was mostly unsure about the outcome of my first peaches experience without my mother and grandmother.

By most any standards we had a large family in a large house; I am the oldest of five children. Although we had a small garden some years all of the canning produce came from the Wagon Guy. I have no memory of his name, and he drove a truck not a wagon, but that's the way I thought of him.

Once a year he would drive through our community and take orders for produce once it came into season. Mom and Gramma would go in together on bushels of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, and beets. All that was left was to wait until his return with the goods. No cell phones, and I don't know if the date was pre-arranged, settled via postcard, or if they called to check up on the plant's progress.

From what I remembered, one day I would come home from school and the bushels would be in our basement next to the laundry room, staying cool until the weekend. It must have been magic in those days. Somehow canning always took place on the hottest of the early fall days.

On canning day we set the littles down with the contents of several 'junk drawers' full of canning rings. There job was to separate the wide mouth rings from the regular size so we could match them to the seals, and then to the available jars. The wide mouth rings and jars seldom matched up, and it was the WORST thing to determine during canning that there were no rings to match your freshly filled jar!

I don't remember any new jars ever being purchased. As I bought my new jars over the past several weeks I wondered what my grandmother would have made of the 'out of stock' signs on the shelves,. Jars came in and right back out of stock, all except (and I chuckled to see it) the wide mouth jars. Somehow the stores seemed to have plenty of them. What they were missing, of course, were the wide mouth rings and seals.

I was, theoretically, ready to tackle the half-bushel of peaches. Hair up in a tight knot, jars, seals, and rings freshly washed in matching numbers, canning kettle on medium heat, ready to warm the jars, funnel ready to fill the jars, non-stick ladle on it's little saucer, jar-lifter ready, recipes researched, sugar and lemon juice ready for the syrup. This is the website I found most useful when looking for step-by-step directions, and these are the peaches I tried to emulate.

While I didn't have a host of female relatives and littles to do the job I had my husband ready and willing to work on this with me. Side by side we powered through the peaches, working our way into a rhythm. While it wasn't the syncopated motions of women long used to the paces and spaces in that big kitchen of my youth, he and I found our own way and created our own dance.

What was different right off the bat was his idea to use the burner of the gas grill for the blanching pot. (Blanching is a quick dip into boiling water to loosen the skins of fruit like peaches and tomatoes before canning.) Now, this was certainly NOT something my grandmother would have done, but it was genius! Our kitchen is about a fifth of the size of that in my childhood home. If we had both tried to maneuver boiling water, peeled peaches, simmering pots, and steaming canning kettle- well- this might be a very different account of the day.

He quickly set up the sawhorses (because of course he did, it always starts with the sawhorses and plywood work space), and set to pitting, dipping, and peeling the peaches. Then it was in the house with the large stainless bowl of skinned peaches, where I would simmer them in hot sugar syrup for two minutes while I got the canning kettle up to boil, heated the jars and seals and rings, and prepared the filling station (aka the kitchen table).

Using an ever-increasing array of longish kitchen tools I attempted to fill the jars as I'd researched: first peach half upside down in the jar and the others overlapping in a neat and tidy column that stopped about 3/4 inch from the rim of the jar.. This was not as easy as it seemed it would be when reading about it, I probably got about half of the jars filled that way. (The reason you want to do this isn't just because it looks nice! It minimizes places that air can hide. You really want all air and bubbles gone when you put the seal in place. If not, you can get peach float. It's still okay, but the exposed fruit may brown where it pokes out of the syrup.)

After the hot peaches were in the jar the green funnel dropped into the opening and I ladled the hot syrup over them, leaving about a half-inch gap from the top of the syrup and the rim of the jar. A quick wipe of the rim of the jar with a clean paper towel is very important to ensure a good seal, then a warm seal (the flat lid thing) was placed on the opening, the ring dropped into place and JUST tightened a wee bit (cooking speak is 'finger-tight'), and the jar placed back into the canning rack sitting on the rim of the large canning kettle.

Once the rack was full it was lowered into the just-boiling water and the lid in place. Then I listened for the kettle to come up to full boil and started the timer: 20 minutes for the pints (wide mouth jars bought in error!) and 25 minutes for the quarts. When the timer went off I turned off the heat, removed the lid, and let the jars sit for five minutes before setting them aside to cool and (hopefully) seal.

I wanted to make sure we had enough peaches to equal four cups finely diced for the jam recipe, so we stopped at 14 pints and 4 quarts of peaches.

From there it was on to the jam. I cleaned the jam jar filling surface (the kitchen table again), washed the syrup off of, well, everything, and consulted the recipes again. I had sugar, lemon juice, pectin, jelly jars, and teeeeensy tiny jelly jars. Everything was clean, canning kettle refilled, wire rack for the jars in place, seals and rings counted and matched.

But before I could even start chopping the peaches I heard it. That PING from the living room as a jar sealed and the vacuum was in place on at least one pint of peaches! With renewed resolve I got the minced peaches, lemon juice, and sugar going in a large pot. Got the jars and seals warmed, and a the ladle, funnel, paper towel, jar lifter ready to go again.

In just a minute or two of stirring, the sugar melted and the peaches came to a boil. After quickly adding the pectin and stirring like crazy for sixty seconds it was time to fill the jam jars. I ladled, my husband wiped, sealed, ringed, finger tightened, then I used the jar lifter to place the filled jars into the canning rack. When it was full I lowered the rack into the boiling water, put the lid on, and after the rolling boil resumed, boiled them for ten minutes. Then the canning kettle lid was removed and they caught their breath for five minutes while I searched for another flat surface where they could cool and seal. They ended up sitting next to their brethren in the living room.

You would think that was all, wouldn't you? But while my husband was knocking down the outside pitting and blanching station I cut up a few of the simmered peaches I'd set aside, tucked them into an unrolled puff pastry, sprinkled it with sugar, and tossed it in the oven for thirty five minutes for a quick peach strudel.

All told, the $44 half-bushel of peaches, 50 cents of lemon juice, 5 pounds of sugar, and $3 of pectin made 14 pints and 4 quarts of canned peach halves, eight jelly jars and eight teeeensy jars of jam, and one strudel.

Was it a lot of work? Yes. Was I really tired when it was done? Again, yes. Would I do it again? Yes; let me show you why.

I woke up the next morning and walked (okay, stumbled) into the kitchen for coffee. My husband was working on a ham/eggs/toast breakfast and had set out the jar of jam with a screw on lid that I had stored in the refrigerator the night before. (I did not, in fact, have room in the canner for this wee baby teeeny jar. I knew we would eat it soon, though, so screw on storage lid was placed on it, this is NOT a canning lid!)

As I walked by the table I saw what looked like a candle. It was the teeeny jar of peach jam, lit up by the morning sun.

Snapping a photo with my iPhone, I preserved not just the peaches and the jam, I caught the benediction from my grandmother. I captured the memory of that long table in our family's dining room, loaded with cooling and softly pinging jars as they settled into their seals. I snapped a memory that is different from that of my childhood canning sessions. This memory is one we made together, me and my husband. Different, but just as good for the soul.

And, this morning? We had his favorite: toast with peanut butter, and peach halves on the side. Memories are good. New experiences are treasures. And these peach halves?

Totally worth every minute.

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