Get the peaches.  I use seconds for a lot of my canning – if you are canning, it doesn’t matter that the fruit isn’t perfect.   Peaches, at the place I bought from, were running $3.75/pound.  The seconds?  .75 cents/pound.  This means that 50 lbs of peaches is NOT $188 dollars, but more like $39.  My kinda price.

Here’s how you do it.  With seconds, you need to move fast.  Same day or at latest, the very next day.  I bought mine coming home from my sister’s baby shower, so I was not ready to do them same day.  I did them the next morning.

• Blanch your peaches.  1-3 minutes.
• Cool your peaches.
• Trim and skin your peaches.
• Cut your peaches up and drop ‘em into a large bowl.

  Aren’t they pretty?

• Drain the bowl.

Now, I cold packed mine.  You can also hot pack them, but it was more work that I wanted to do.  Cold packing was easier!

To cold pack:

• ¼ tsp. of Ascorbic acid in each pint jar, ½ tsp. in each quart.
• Fill to the shoulder with peaches.  (The shoulder is where the jar starts to slope and become the neck, with the rings on it.)
• Then, make up a syrup.  I like less sugar in something so sweet, so I used a 10% solution – 1 cup sugar to 10 cups water.  Easy to remember too!
• Fill the jars to the shoulder with the syrup.  Most jars won’t take anywhere near a cup, even the quarts; the peach juice fills them up.

• Water can for 25 minutes for pints and 30 minutes for quarts.

• Make sure your jars seal.

You now have peaches to do lots of things with.  Peach pie for Christmas anyone?