White Peach Sauce & Cherry Amartetto recipes

True Texan asked for my receipe for the White Peach Sauce and the Cherry Amaretto Jam and I've been lazy to post them.


Let me first say I don't know that I personally would do the white peach sauce again. It might have just been the peaches but they were such a pain in the BUTT to peal I would be hard pressed to want to go through that again.

10 pounds of peaches, halved, peeled and chopped
3 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup lemon juice

Cook the peaches down in a large pot. I used my immersion blender to blend the peaches but you could use a potato masher to help them break down and release their juice. I just like smoothness of the blended peaches. Add the vanilla extract and the vanilla bean seeds and the pod so that the vanilla flavor will infuse all the peaches. Stir occasionally.

After approximately 20 minutes over medium heat, the peaches should be fairly well cooked down. Remove the vanilla bean from the pot (making sure to squeeze all the goodness from it).

Taste and add sugar to achieve your desired sweetness. I found a happy, flavorful place at 3 cups, but depending on the innate sweetness in the peaches, you might be able to stop at 2 cups. You could also add peach juice or apple juice to cut the sugar but I'm lazy and tend to just use the white sugar.

Pour peach sauce into pint jars, leaving a bit more than an inch of headspace. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar and stir in with a chopstick or plastic spoon. Wipe rims, apply lids and process for 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

If you want to make butter from some of the sauce, reserve 6-8 cups of sauce and cook down in a slow cooker (making sure to add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice for every two cups of sauce at the beginning of cooking).

Cherry Amaretto Jam

· 8 cups cherries - pitted and stemmed (about 3 lbs - ish) Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1/2 cup amaretto Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1/2 cup water Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 1.75 oz package NO SUGAR NEEDED pectin Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 2 tablespoon lemon juice Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 tablespoon vanilla Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 teaspoon almond extract

Basically I pitted and chopped the cherries and threw them in a pot with the everything but the pectin. Cooked that a bit, hit it with my immersion blender (what can I say, I like my jam smooth), added the pectin and then put it in jars and processed them for 20 minutes since I live above sea level over 1000 feet.

So far, DELICIOUS.

This weekend I will be making blueberry almond butter and teaching a co-worker how to make blueberry grand marnier jam. It's beginning to feel like a lot of the stuff I can this year may include alcohol.

What does that say about my year?

Bite

Earlier this summer I thought my peas were done for. They had this weird yellow wilt going on and my research indicated that they were doomed. That was pretty depressing since the old remedy seemed to double dig and hope for the best next year.

As the summer as continued my peas have rallied and I have been able to pick a handful of pods every couple of days. Normally I stand outside and munch on either the pods whole (I have sugar snap peas in one area), or open the peas and eat them raw (and Alaskan Peas in another part of the garden).

Tuesday though my not quite 2 year old saw me open a pod and raising his hand up to me said "bite?"

So I crouched down and let him pick the small green pea out of my hand. He popped it in his mouth, looked at me and said "MMMMMM".

That right there made the entire raised bed building, filling, planting and water system insanity worth it.

Because you see, he won't eat canned peas from the tin cans found at the grocery store and who can blame him. If you ate one of those and then a fresh pea from the garden and didn't know they were related....well..you would doubt they were related frankly.

Admittedly, my garden isn't producing a majority of our food right now. It might not ever.

But my son ate 20 fresh peas from that garden and loved them.

And that was worth it to me.

Where have I Been?

I have been meaning to blog but my nights, my "free time" seem to get lost and slip away from me lately.

My peas in my raised beds have some weird pea wither and are yellowing from the bottoms up. Best I can tell I'll just have to double dig and hope for the best next year which is incredibly disappointing.

My tomatoes are huge and I've seen plenty of flowers but no tomatoes yet.

Cucumbers are going crazy and lots of little yellow flowers there with tiny cucumbers behind them. Can't WAIT.

In canning news I've made 3 pints of Cherry Amaretto jam and 3 pints of white peach vanilla sauce.



A little foamy for a couple of the cherry jars but overall still delicious.

I should be back to posting at least a little more regularly in the coming weeks as new job becomes old hat and family time settles down around a not quite 2 year olds schedule.