Peach Put Up

This year, I’ve been learning all about preserving food. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to grow a garden this summer. It was just too hot. I may try again when the weather cools. I’m in the south, so our growing season here is a little longer.

What I have been doing is waiting for produce that goes on sale for cheap, buying a lot of it, and freezing it. I’m almost certain that I will never buy anything that is commercially frozen again! Almost. That stuff is ridiculously overpriced! You never know though when you may have a food emergency and need to visit the neighborhood freezer section. I’m not going to wish that kind of emergency on me though.

I’m really into IQF (really, freezing everything flat on cookie sheets first so that they stay individual and then transferring to plastic bags) for everything from cherries to rice to beans. You can’t really do that with peaches at home though. Peaches will brown and dry out if you don’t use some kind of syrup. Usually, it’s a sugar syrup. Freezing anything in liquid will freeze into a block. You know, how everything was frozen back in the day. So there’s really no way to freeze them flat. That I can live with. What I can’t do is the sugar syrup.

I decided to try two different sweeteners to see which one will work best. For every pound of peaches, I mixed in the juice from a quarter of a lemon and two tablespoons of agave or vegetable glycerin. I packed the peaches in 2 cup portions in ziploc bags and labeled all so I can see which one will work best. I know that they won’t be able to stay in the freezer forever, but I think the life span is about 6 months. I’ll check in a week to see if anything got brown or too dry. Anything that is will go right into a smoothie!