Peaches

Movin' to the country I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches
Peaches come from a can they were put there by a man woman. :)

You don't have to move to the country in order to eat a lot of peaches. And they don't have to come from a can in a factory downtown either. If you preserve them correctly you can eat peaches everyday.

Alright, enough with The Presidents of the United States and onto canning peaches.

                                         Blanch the peaches in boiling water for 20-30 sec.

                                              Immediately place them in an ice water bath

  To remove the skin I cup the peach in my hands and twist in opposite directions. The skin just falls off. Other suggestions are to use a rag to do the same thing. That might give you a better grip.

Cut the peaches in half and remove the pit. If you made sure to get cling free, or freestone peaches this task is simple.

Soak the peaches in a lemon juice/water bath to prevent browning.

Make a light syrup (5 1/2 cups of water and 1 1/4 cups sugar) and keep the syrup hot, but not boiling.

Pack peaches cavity side down into hot jars leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Ladle hot syrup over peaches leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Remove the air bubbles. Wipe the rim of your jar clean. Adjust the two-piece caps and place in your boiling water canner.

                                                       Process quarts for 20 minutes.

                                                               mmmmm peaches!!

Regrowing Green Onions

I had heard that green onions, even from the grocery store, will continue to grow once you have harvested the main stem. I decided to put it to the test.

 I purchased these green onions from Winco and used them for our dinner. Normally, I would compost this, thinking it was waste.

 This time I put it in a dish of water. Daily I replaced the old water with fresh water. Within 3 days I noticed that the green onion was GROWING.

                            After a few cuttings from the "new" green onion I put it in a pot of miracle grow soil. That made it really happy.  I have since moved the green onions into my herb garden. The same bundle I bought from Winco has been growing new harvestable green onions for 3 months now.

                                                   It also works with romaine lettuce.

I wasn't able to successfully move the plant out into the garden, but I did get 2 cuttings off of each one. It didn't grow as tall or as thick as it originally was when I bought it, but I consider it a win that I didn't have to buy additional lettuce as often.

Plums (Italian Prunes)

A wonderful lady in my church let me pick plums from her tree. My parents had the same type of plum tree in our backyard growing up. I was so excited to be able to have a little bit of my childhood back :)

I picked a 5 gal bucket with the help of the kids.

                                                           I washed them in cool water.

                                                        I cut them in half and removed the pit.

                       I gave them a quick dip in a lemon juice/water bath to help prevent browning.

                                         Then I laid them all pretty like in my dehydrator.

                                                                       Hello gorgeous

With the dehydrator set on 135 degrees and roughly 10 hours later

I had perfectly dried, yet still pliable, plums.