Awash in Produce

It's harvest season around here. And canning season. And getting it in the freezer season. My early peach tree (the Reliance) ripened so quickly that I wasn't ready for it. As a consequence, my garage became a fruit fly breeding ground and the peaches were going bad by the minute. By the time I got to them to do something with them probably half of the fruit was beyond any use. I've gotten 6 quarts of juice (inducting my birthday present steam juicer in the process) and four batches of peach syrup: vanilla peach syrup and spiced peach syrup. The syrups were so easy and I could have bottle them, but didn't have time. Instead I put them in freezer containers and into the deep freeze they went. I didn't have time to try to get any peach jam out of this particular crop. Maybe with the O'Henry tree that ripens in late October (just a side-note here: I liked the names of these peach tree varieties. "Reliance" sounds dependable and sure. "O'Henry" reminded me of all of the O'Henry stories Justin used to read to me when we were dating. He has a lovely O'Henry collection. So my O'Henry tree is in honor of Justin). Oh, and I also just pureed a bunch of peaches and froze them for making peach ice cream at some point. Anyway, tomatoes are coming on now, so I simmered a batch of spaghetti sauce most of the day that I pureed and put in the freezer this evening. I've done 12 pints of green beans, and with the next batch of beans tomorrow I'm going to be doing dilly beans. They're dill pickled beans that are heavenly! My mom's grapes are coming on now, and so last Saturday I juiced them and got nearly four full quarts. Yikes! Are you tired yet? I am! The zucchini has slowed down a bit, but the summer squash (basically a yellow zucch.) hasn't slowed down in the least. And my vegetable crisper bins are chock full of cucumbers I've gotta pickle. What was I thinking???? I am having fun, though, I have to admit, looking at my jars and containers of produce. The most time consuming part is getting all of this produce ready to go in the jars. Once the stuff is in the jars the processing is easy. So, pickled beans tomorrow. Pickle pickles are right after that. If I have time I will post my peach syrup recipes. It's very easy and wonderful on pancakes, waffles, ice cream. It's probably wonderful on oatmeal or hot cereal. Hmmm. I'll have to experiment and see what else it's good on!

Oh, and I picked up the piano teaching again. It's busy, but I love my students. They are fun to work with. All that being said, I'm sure you can imagine there are a number of things going to pot around here. Housework is at the top of the list (not that I'm the greatest housekeeper in the first place!). I may have to declare a cease fire, however, on the canning thing and get SOME housework done. Or get the kids to do it. Yeah!