Wonderful 59 degrees this morning, crisp and bright morning.
I was up to my elbows in peaches yesterday. It was a hard day; these were free peaches from a neighbor's tree and had a lot of insect damage, bruising, etc. So much cutting, trimming, and care. Some were cling, which means that the seed does not come away from the pulp easily--meaning more cutting. And they're small. As I cut the peaches up, I dropped the pieces into a pot of water with some lemon juice in it to keep them from turning brown.
I ended up with 5 quarts, and then took the water I'd put them in, cooked it down, and made it into 5 pints of peach jelly. The water was full of peach juice and bits of pulp and made a pretty jelly. This was water I might have normally tossed out, but this time I was able to use it, given the amount of juiciness in these peaches.
The other thing I've been working on has been fun: dehydrated tomatoes. I've wanted to try this for years, and finally this year I have time to do it. The tray above holds a couple Black Krim slices and the rest are a large pink tomato that puzzles me because I don't remember planting pink tomatoes. It may be from a volunteer plant, as we had several good healthy volunteers this year.
There are about 10 tomatoes of various sizes in this pint jar. I could probably pack it fuller, but this is fine. These are the same as the popular sun-dried tomatoes; I could cover them with olive oil to store them too. I may try that with the batch I'm drying today. This is a great way to use up small amounts of tomatoes--we're getting tomatoes ripening in dribbles, which makes it difficult to make things like pasta sauce, but I can dry a small batch every day.
So back to the kitchen for more peaches. I'm about a third of the way through, so I see a couple more long days ahead of me. Is it worth it? I'm not sure, truthfully. But here are the peaches, and here I am, so that's all there is to it.
