canning peaches

I am tired.

Thursday after swimming lessons I drove up to Snohomish to pick up 50 pounds of peaches for a total of $23. Seriously. They are GOOD, too. We ate like five of them for lunch that day.

I arranged to borrow a water bath canner from a friend (yay Dawn, to my rescue!) and picked up all the goods Thursday. Friday was when I got down to business.

All in all, it was a disaster.

Disaster 1: Dishwasher steam sanitize.

Our "fancy" new dishwasher has a steam sanitize setting. I thought, "how cool! I can use that when I need the prep my canning jars!" I wasn't allowed to select JUST "steam sanitize," nor could I select a "light" load and "steam sanitize," so I had to pick a "normal" load and add "steam sanitize." Now these were CLEAN JARS. Not a scrap on them. The instruction manual said the lower end of the cycle would be 90 minutes (sheesh), and the higher end 250 minutes. The dishwasher claims that it can "sense" the grunge level of dishes and will shorten the cycle appropriately.

BALONEY.

Two-and-a-half hours later the dishwasher was STILL GOING and I let out a few choice Mormon words and gave up. I figured the jars were hot enough. I had prepped at least a full batch of peaches (blanching, pitting, slicing), my sugar water solution was made, my lids were boiled, my water bath was boiling, I was ready to go.

Disaster 2: Broken jars.

In my first batch, almost immediately I noticed two of my quart jars were "floating." Uhh why was that? I kinda hit them a little bit to see if they'd go down and they didn't.... then all of a sudden up floated a peach. WHAAAAT?  Two of my jars had busted out the bottom. I freaked and texted Dawn-to-my-rescue, who promptly replied back "TOO FULL!!!!" Uh oh. I pulled the other five jars out, took some peaches out, reprocessed them, filled up two clean jars to equal a full load, then started over.

By this time, it's dinnertime. I'm a sweaty mess, the humidity in our house is 100%, dinner (that I made while the jars were sanitizing and I was bored and the kids were sleeping.... still mad about that) is in the 400-degree oven, kids are now cranky, ETC.

(If I had started when I wanted to, I expected to be done by dinner. The cursed 2.5-hour demon dishwasher cycle messed up my whole plan.)

Disaster 3: I ran out of jars?

I processed a second batch to water bath while we had dinner, which was timed well. At this point I was done with all my peach prep and realized I had A TON of peaches left. LIKE A LOT. And like, I didn't have enough JARS for them all. I seriously had a ZILLION jars in my house and I used EVERY ONE OF THEM. (Well, I found three more hidden in a closet today and I was kinda bummed I had forgotten about them. But really every jar I had that I knew about at the time I used. Sigh.)

I sent Shane on an emergency Fred Meyer run, wherein he called me and said, "they're out." WHATTTTTT??? I wanna die. "But I was just there the other day. Are you sure? Don't they have some of the fancy blue jars?" See, it's the 100th anniversary of the mason jar or Ball or Kerr or someone and they have these vintage BLUE jars to commemorate. "Well, yeah they have them but they are twice as expensive." I reply as cooly as I can for my 100-degree house, "Please buy the blue jars and come. home. now. thankyouverymuch."

The blue jars are just pint jars so I realize I might need to do something else with my peaches, you know, cook them down as pie filling or salsa or something.

I should note that yes, at this point I gave up and went to bed. My feet hurt like crazy. I was so tired. And I'm training for a half marathon and I had to get up the next day at 6:30 AM and run 8 miles. EIGHT MILES. Should I mention that Advil is my best friend right now?

Our story resumes Saturday afternoon. I survived my run.

I found a killer recipe for peach barbeque sauce for chicken, meat, etc. It uses peaches, red bell pepper, onion, garlic, etc,. all things I had in the house! Miracle! I whipped up a batch. I actually filled four pint jars, and I canned three of them (saving one to use now!). I processed one more batch of six pint jars of peaches AND THEN I WAS DONE.

OUR SAGA ENDED 24+ HOURS LATER. I canned:

• 12 quarts
• 16 pints
• 2 ".75" pints (I think -- small ones for gifts I hope!)
• 4 pints of peach BBQ sauce   

And there you have it. I have survived. Do I want to do this again in October with apples and tomatoes? I'm not sure. I'll keep you posted.

Millions of peaches.... peaches for me...