The husband is a bourbon drinker, so I’d been searching peach and bourbon pairings when I came across this jam. I adapted the recipe to follow the ratios specified by Pomona Universal Pectin — if you’ve never used Pomona before, it allows you to use less sugar than regular pectin.  I didn’t weigh the peaches, but this used about 24 or so of my smaller- sized peaches.  I’d picked mostly white peaches (White Lady), but thankfully the boy had picked a few of the scarlet-tinged Red Haven orange variety — which has this brilliant reddish-orange hue beneath the skin. Aren’t they lovely?

Aside from waiting for the canning water to boil (tip: start it before you start cooking the jam), peeling peaches is probably the most time-consuming part of this process. Blanching the peaches may seem like extra work, but trust me, it does save time — and avoids wasting any of that precious peach flesh that you might lose peeling with a paring knife.

How to Peel Peaches:

Bring a pot of water — deep enough to submerge a peach — to boil. Drop peaches in and boil for 20-30 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and drop into an ice water bath, then set on your work surface. Peels will slip right off.

Recipe: Bourbon Peach Jam
adapted from Beantown Baker

Ingredients:

1 box Pomona Universal Pectin (follow package instructions for exact amounts of calcium water and pectin)
8 cups mashed peaches
4 cups organic cane sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon vanilla paste (or 1 vanilla bean, split in half)
1/4 cup bourbon

Instructions: (Before you begin, make sure all equipment is clean and ready. Sterilize jars in boiling water or the dishwasher — here are prep instructions from the National Center for Home Preservation.) Prepare calcium water according to pectin package instructions. Peel, pit and mash peaches. Measure into a large, non-reactive stock pot, and stir in lemon juice, vanilla paste (or bean) and calcium water. In a large bowl, combine sugar and pectin.

Bring peach mixture to a boil. Add pectin-sugar mixture, stirring vigorously for 1-2 minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return to a boil and remove from heat. (Remove vanilla bean, if using.)

Fill jars, leaving 1/4-inch headroom at the top. Wipe the rims clean with a damp paper towel and screw on the lids. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes. Remove from water and set jars on a dry kitchen towel to cool. You should hear the soft “pop” sound as the lids seal — check to make sure the inner lid is depressed, indicating it’s properly sealed. Store jam in a cool, dark place until you’re ready to enjoy. (This made nine half-pints and one full pint.)

Have you joined the Canvolution? What are you preserving for winter?
This was a grown-up-only endeavor — my just-about-4-year-old lacks the attention span for such a time-consuming project — but if you’re looking to include your children in canning, read this article first.

I made slight alterations, using turbinado sugar and a touch of honey and a splash of Virginia’s North Gate Petit Verdot that was also in need of using up. (Not that I couldn’t have used a glass or two, but it would’ve made it even less likely that I would get all our luggage packed that night.)

For the recipe, see: Tomato Onion Jam by Jennifer Perillo/Tasty Kitchen. My alterations: 1 1/2 cup raw (turbinado sugar) and 1/4 cup raw honey, omit the brown sugar. Add 2 tablespoons red wine in lieu of lemon juice.

This weekend was the Canvolution kick-off — a nationwide effort to restore the art of preserving food, launched by former Washington Post blogger Kim O’Donnel and a host of other food writers and bloggers. Visit the Canning Across America website for a host of canning resources and advice, particularly this great article on canning with kids.

The highlight of my first mother-son canning experiment was seeing the pride in my son’s eyes as he handed his aunt and grandma their jar of jam, declaring, “I made this myself!”

What have you canned lately?

So, my recipe quantities were: 1 lb plums, scant 1 c sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T honey, 1 vanilla bean. I followed the original instructions and got a nice, thick jam, but I wasn’t sure what to do about the peels. I suspect that Pim’s green gage plum skins were thinner and perhaps dissolved? The prune plum skins had not, and were tough when I tried one. I strained the cooked jam then to remove the peels, which thinned my jam a bit so I was pleased to see when I opened a jar that it was a nice, jelly-like consistency. It is quite tasty, sweet and the vanilla adds such a lovely fragrance.

Now, Pim’s recipe is for a small batch to begin with, so guess what happens when you halve that? A meager two mini jam pots…

It probably wasn’t worth processing them since one went straight into the fridge to be eaten soon, but oh well. It was part of the learning experience. I will definitely keep practicing – and reading up on jam techniques over the winter. In the meantime, head over to Lelo in Nopo and check out the yummy jams she’s been making!

Oh, and the little bit left over? Excellent topping for peach ice cream!

Recipe: Amaretto Peach Pound Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 c peaches, finely chopped
• 1 T amaretto liquer, optional
• 1 c butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 2 c sugar
• 1 c buckwheat flour
• 2 c unbleached flour
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1/2 t almond extract
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt

Instructions: Toss peaches with amaretto and let stand while preparing cake batter. Preheat over to 350 degrees and grease 2 loaf pans. Combine butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and almond extract until smooth. Combine dry ingredients and blend into butter mixture. Fold in peaches and pour batter in loaf pans. Bake for 50 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

Farms of Origin: This was made with my local Wye Mills buckwheat flour, Harris peaches, South Mountain butter.

Friday at lunch, I stopped by the McLean Market and then headed out to Potomac Vegetable Farms’ Vienna farmstand. The farm is located Just down the road from Tysons Corner, where the McMansions are rapidly encroaching on every available spot of green around the farm. Last year, we got a few peaches in our share from the neighboring orchard – but it has since been replaced by a new development. The farm is actually divided by the development, so our farmers have to drive their trucks through their backyards to go back and forth between the crops.

Back at home, I decided to keep things simple. I followed the crushed tomatoes recipe here, omitting the salt and adding the lemon juice per USDA recommendations, to protect against botulism. I wound up staying up late Friday night working on this as tropical storm Hanna (coincidentally the name of my tomato farmer!) was heading our way and I was afraid of losing power with pots full of sauce on the stove. Of course, the power never went out. But, while this was simpler than I had imagined, it was also time-intensive and definitely safer done after the toddler’s bedtime.

The steps are fairly straight-forward:

• wash, peel, core and quarter tomatoes (to peel, blanch in boiling water than ice bath to cool)
• bring tomatoes to boil in large pot, stirring and crushing, boil for 5 minutes
• boil jars to sterilize
• add 1 T lemon juice to each pint jar (2 T for quart jars)
• fill jars leaving 1/2 inch headroom
• top with lids and process in boiling water for 35 minutes (45 minutes for quart jars)

In the end, my 20+ pounds of tomatoes produced 8 pints jarred sauce and two more pints in the freezer, with a few pounds leftover that I made into a late summer harvest soup.

Short-Cut: If you don’t want to go through the canning process, you can freeze your cooked tomatoes in freezer bags or reusable containers. I read in several places that you still need to add lemon juice or vinegar, but if you boil your sauce before and after freezing, that should also kill pesky bacteria.

This was a fairly fool-proof recipe but I do recommend doing some reading about canning techniques before getting started. The USDA Home Canning guides are available here for further background.