A Plethora of Peaches

Wow we are really getting close to having this baby! I have been so uncomfortable this week that I am just ready to get it over with and meet my little girl. Luckily I have lots of things to do to take my mind off the pregnancy. For example, I have had to find ways of using up the gigantic box of peaches I bought at the farmers market last weekend! We buy peaches from Pearson Farm all Summer long, they are seriously the best peaches ever! Peaches also happen to be one of my very favorite fruits so when our peach lady told me last week she could give me a deal on a big box of scratch and dent peaches I jumped at the chance. This gave me about 50 very ripe peaches that I had to find something to do with right away.

Well it just so happened that my Birthday was last week and I got a bunch of canning supplies and a canning cookbook so the time seemed right to try my first ever (unassisted) foray in to canning. I have a good friend who kindly showed me the basics of canning last winter so between her tutorial and the instructions in my book it wasn't too difficult however it was very hot! It's a shame so much canning needs to be done in the Summer, I think I'll wait until cooler weather and maybe do apple sauce next time :-) This time around I made canned peach slices in vanilla syrup. I haven't tried them yet but they have every appearance of being delicious and I was thrilled that I was successfully able to seal the jars and complete the water bath canning process with no incidents. We also froze some peaches for smoothies, left plenty whole for snaking, and used some for making peach simple syrup.

I won't go in to instructions for the whole canning process at this point (maybe some other time when I have more energy!) but I do encourage anyone who is interested to try it some time. It seems intimidating but it really isn't that bad once you learn the basics, I am definitely excited to try it again! The peach simple syrup was so, well.... simple, to make that I will tell you how to do that though! it's also a great way to use up your leftover peach peels.

To make the peach simple syrup you take all your left over peach peels and put them in a large sauce pan. Put in enough water to cover the peels and bring to a boil, remove from heat and let sit for 30 minutes. Strain peels and any solids by poring the mixture through a fine sieve or cheesecloth and measure the remaining liquid. Return the liquid to the pot and add as much sugar as you have liquid (this uses a LOT of sugar, I actually didn't have enough in the house so I had to short mine a little but it still turned out fine so if you want to reduce it a bit you could). Return mixture to a boil and stir until sugar dissolves. Store in an air tight jar or bottle in the fridge.

I have been mixing my simple syrup with club soda to make a sort of peach soda and it is delish! We've also used it in peach milk shakes and has worked quite well but I bet it would be really delicious in a cocktail. Maybe I'll have some left for after the baby is born and I can try it in an alcoholic beverage then :-)

Christmas Cheer and a Recipe for Spiced Cider

Echo helping decorate the tree

This past weekend we had our (semi) annual Christmas party and it was a great success! As usual I didn't take a enough pictures but here are a couple of our tree and then a few shots from the party.

The finished tree

We opted for a smaller tree we could put up on a table top this year to keep Echo from pulling it over or otherwise making mischief with it. The result was still pretty satisfying, almost as good as having a big tree.

I had been looking forward to this party for months, it's such a great chance to catch up with friends and see people that I don't see enough of. There were lots of babies in attendance this year which made it even more fun. I can see how much better it's going to get when they are old enough to play charades with us and participate in the white elephant. Having kids around at Christmas makes it so much more magical.

We played apples to apples (which I haven't done in ages) as well as our other standard party games and had a great time eating and drinking hot cider while we relaxed by the fire. Echo wanted to help play cards with us and was in to everyone's hands.

I wish i had gotten pictures of our food and drink spread which was pretty fantastic this year but I got busy hosting and forgot. This year I made my own spiced cider and wanted to record the recipe for posterity. Here's how I did it.

ingredients
2 bottles of plain apple juice
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs molasses
3 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp whole allspice
2 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 orange rind

All you have to do to make this yummy spiced cider is put it in the crock pot on low for 6 hours and enjoy hot! I also had some cold the next day and it was delicious as well.

Thanks so much to my party guests for coming, it is always such a pleasure to catch up with everyone and get to celebrate the season with some of my favorite people!

Stretching Your Coffee Dollar With Iced Coffee

Is there anything more beautiful than that moment when the dream hits the coffee?

 I have a new addiction this Summer, iced coffee. I used to be opposed to cold coffee beverages but the Southern Summer heat combined with my ever growing need for caffeine has driven me to be a huge iced coffee fan. It kind started as a way to make our coffee money go a little further. You see, one of the things we don't skimp on in this house is good coffee. It has to be whole bean and it must be freshly ground before each time we brew. We have a fantastic cone filter coffee machine that I am just in love with but the problem was we would always have some left over in each pot and would end up trowing some out. I absolutely HATE wasting things, it's something that really bothers me. I could just see our good coffee money going down the drain and was killing me! I started saving our extra coffee in a stopper bottle we got at Ikea  (seriously these things are great, we use them for everything) and putting it in the fridge. Now every afternoon I can pour myself a delicious cold coffee treat. My perfect recipe is to fill the glass about two thirds with coffee, then the last third with milk, then I add just a touch of chocolate syrup and a few ice cubes, pure perfection!

I guess you would ideally have fresh coffee for you iced brew or even better do a cold brew, but for a busy (and exhausted!) mom of a 9 month old this is a great solution. It also helps me not waste coffee which makes me feel a lot more justified in buying the good stuff :-)