Peaches for Days

We finally went on a trip.

Two weeks ago, we piled in the car and drove to Ohio to visit family. It was our first big road trip with an electric car, and we charged it along the way without any problems. Nice to know that works well; the car plans the route and where to charge based upon what the battery level is when you start. While we were there, we went to a charging station a few times but also just plugged it into the 220 outlet at my in-laws' house which was slower but allowed for more visiting time. 

My mother-in-law had ordered a box of peaches from the Georgia Peach Truck, about 25 pounds. On a whim when she went to pick them up, she got another box. So there were 50 pounds of peaches to do something with in a relatively short time. We ate a lot of them, cutting up 4-5 peaches every morning for breakfast. However, between my brother-in-law and me, we made short work of the rest.

First of all, I made a peach cobbler. I always forget that the texture of cobbler is weird to me, and I should just make a crisp.

Over the course of the next two days, I made two batches of jam without added pectin. My in-laws often get jars of jam in the mail from me, and they had them there for me to take back, but I filled them with jam instead. However, we came up against the aforementioned Great Canning Lid Shortage of 2021. Since there weren't a lot of options, we decided to try paraffin like people used to do. It took a few tries for me to get the pattern down, but it worked just fine. I was even presented with some gingham and VINTAGE Wiss pinking shears from the 1940's, in the original box and hardly ever used. The shears were in amazing condition. We ended up with eleven jars, and by the time we left there were only nine left. 

Paraffin cooling

Looking adorable

Another thing everyone wanted was a pie. I looked up a recipe and used this one for the filling, but made my usual crust, this time half Crisco and half butter. I struggled a lot with rolling this one out, and the base was patched in myriad ways. Thankfully it was under the filling. (I nicknamed it "Frankenpie.") We ate it, still warm, out on a deck after some burgers. Summer is awesome.

After all that, my brother-in-law made two more pies, and he tossed a bunch of peach chunks in cornbread which I had never considered but now think is amazing. What is even more amazing is that we got through all 50 pounds of peaches in a week. 

Now we're back, and getting settled, and I made bread today and I'm making a different kind of pie, a custard pie from a recipe I saw in the NYT.