The first weekend in August, we decided to head out to our local orchard and pick some peaches. A friend had tipped me off that they had them for $0.90/lb. When we got there, however, we found out they were having a "Clean-up" sale to get rid of the last of the peaches. We scored 20 lbs of peaches for $0.45/lb!! Now, I'm not going to say it was easy picking - because there was a lot of overripe fruit rotting on the trees, but boy was it worth it! Ira had fun eating as many peaches as he could while Andy and I picked for about 45 minutes. I think he ate like 5!
After we were done picking the owner (who is a friend of Andy's family) and I were talking about how nothing compares to freshly picked produce. Then I found out an interesting fact. He told me that the sugar doesn't really set into the peaches until the last two weeks. The problem with store-bought peaches is that they are typically picked prior to that, then ripened on the way to the store. No wonder these peaches were so good and sweet!!!
We also picked 20 lbs of summer gold apples for $0.49/lb. Now they were easy picking! The trees were absolutely lousy with apples. I think we picked all 20 lbs. in about 5 minutes.
Then began the process of putting it all up! My oh my were we busy with that for awhile!
Now, not that I don't love fruit crisps, pies, and the like, but quite honestly, if we make them, we eat them, and who really needs to be eating that stuff all the time? So we were boring and just blanched and sliced all the peaches and froze them to be used in fruit salads or smoothies. Oh yeah, and I made about half a gallon of baby food out of them too. Unlike the baby food peaches that you buy at the store that are that nasty orangish/yellow/gold color, these are an absolutely beautiful coral color (I think the red is the sugar that sets in the peaches the last 2 weeks.) They will definitely be one of the later foods we introduce to Ruby - they are VERY SWEET!!!
We were also boring with the apples and just made applesauce. Although I must say, the applesauce is anything BUT boring! We didn't have to add any sugar, but we did add some cinnamon and some cloves. OH MY!!! It tastes and smells ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!!! I also made some up into baby food for Ruby.
3 comments:
did you can the applesauce or just freeze it? you can also mix the sweet baby food peaches with something else, like ground chicken to mellow the taste.
Oh please send me the name of the farm! I wasn't up for anything of the sort this year (we didn't even get all the apples off our own tree), but I'd love to go picking next year!
I'd love your applesauce recipe! We plan to go back and pick mid-September b/c they said the largest variety of apples would be available at the same time then. Applesauce if definitely on my to-do list!
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