Peaches are in season here in July and the first part of August. I'd been meaning to go pick some for weeks, but things kept coming up that kept me extremely busy. So I almost missed out this year!
Saturday we finally had a free day, so we called some of the orchards around here to see if they still had peaches. The answer was always the same, "Sorry, we're out for the season.". I was beginning to think we weren't going to find any! We drove to a produce stand about 50 miles away, and they had two small boxes of local peaches left. So I got the last of the local peaches! And it was totally worth it!
The peaches were very ripe, so we had to put them up right away. We blanched them in boiling water for about 30 seconds, then put them in cold water. The peels slide right off!
My husband even donned an apron and helped me peel them!
Then I sliced them up and put some right into the freezer bags.
For some more of them I used this recipe from Where the Wild Ferns Grow : Frozen Peaches With Orange Juice. I thought I had orange juice concentrate so I didn't buy any more. It turns out what I had was Orange Peach Mango juice concentrate, so that's what I used. It turned out awesome! I let the peaches sit in the juice for a while as I finished up the other peaches, and the juice turned a pretty pinkish color with the yellow peaches peeking through. It really is like frozen sunshine!
I made a peach crisp dessert with the 'frozen sunshine' peaches and it was really good served with vanilla ice cream!
Peach Crisp
4 cups peaches in juice concentrate
1/3 to 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup quick cooking oatmeal
Put peaches in an ungreased 8 inch square baking pan. Crumble together brown sugar, flour, salt butter and oatmeal. Spread on top of peaches. Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve with vanilla ice cream!
With the rest of the peaches I made my sister-in-law's recipe from Little House on the Prairie Living : Peach - Cantaloupe Butter. Cantaloupes are also in season here, so this is as fresh and as tasty as it gets!
+
= Delicious!
They look really good! Didn't you eat any of them, as just peaches??
ReplyDeleteYour local peaches sound so yummy over my store bought ones:) That Orange Peach Mango juice concentrate sounds really good too! Now I'll have to give your Peach Crisp recipe a try sometime....
ReplyDelete@Emily, yup, we did eat a bunch just as peaches too...my 3 year old is a peach monster! :)
ReplyDelete@Sarah, The local peaches were so good! Thanks again for the recipe!
What did you think of the Peach/Cantaloupe Butter? That's all I made this year, no other jelly!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really good! Ours turned out tasting more like cantaloupe because the one we used was so ripe and flavorful. I wasn't sure Loren would like it, because he's not a big fan of cantaloupe, but he did! Thanks!
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