Everything's Peachy

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a neighbor who was hawking Palisade peaches as part of a fundraiser for the Optimists Club. I like optimists, being one myself. I don’t know what their club does, but I love peaches. So I said I’d take a box.

I especially love peaches grown in the orchards of Palisade, a community on Colorado’s Western Slope. I know that Georgia boasts of being the “peach state,” and far be it from me to dispute that, having never eaten a Georgia peach fresh off the tree. But the peaches from Colorado’s Western Slope, when the weather cooperates fully in the spring as the blossoms are popping open, are sweet, juicy, and absolutely delicious. Given Colorado’s unpredictable springtime weather, even on the warmer western side of the mountains, good weather is never a certainty.

The box of peaches was delivered to me on Saturday. I have been looking at the unopened box since, afraid to look inside, knowing that those peaches were ready to eat. I knew that there was a minimum of 20 peaches in there. While my husband and I love peaches, eating 20 before they become soft and mushy, and the little gnats start flying around, was going to be tough.

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I made a pie crust (actually enough pie crust for two double-crust pies) and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight. This morning, armed and ready to make pies, I got up early, made a pot of coffee, and tentatively opened the box.

Well, there were actually 24 beautiful, gigantic peaches, each in their own little individual plastic resting place. I can’t say they were glistening, as the fuzzy skin prevents that from happening. They were, however, perfectly and completely ripe. Not too ripe. Perfectly ripe.

I filled a large Dutch oven with water and brought it to a boil. I filled my largest bowl with cold water, and added ice to it to ensure that it was very cold. I then carefully placed several peaches into the boiling water and let them sit for 45 seconds or so, and then took them out with a slotted spoon and placed them in the ice bath. After a minute or so, I rubbed off the skin. Easy as can be.

Now, this is what I do any time I prepare peaches to make a pie, or to can or freeze for the winter, or to prepare them for ice cream. Same technique every time. But let me tell you that it hardly ever works the way it’s supposed to. Even when the peaches are supposedly ripe, the skin rarely comes off the way it does for Alton Brown or other cooking gurus who demonstrate the technique on television. The problem, I think, is that even when the peaches feel ripe because they are soft, they often aren’t. I don’t know this for a fact, not being a horticulturist, but my guess is that once peaches are picked, they no longer ripen. They might get softer but they don’t get riper. Therefore, they hang on to their skin no matter what.

But these peaches, as I said earlier, are ripe. Perfectly ripe. Therefore, the skins came off with a simple rub of my hand over the peach. I’m embarrassed to tell you just how happy that made me. The peaches are without flaw.

So, now I had 24 skinless peaches (actually 18 because I set aside six for us to eat), cut into slices, covered with Fruit Fresh to prevent them from discoloring, awaiting further action.

Normally I use seven peaches to make a pie. I recognized, however, that these were really large peaches, so I set aside the slices of 12 of them to be used for my two pies. I prepared them using my mother’s peach pie recipe:

Fresh Peach Pie

5 c. sliced peaches (about 7 medium)
1 t. lemon juice
1 c. sugar
¼ c. flour or 2-1/2 T. tapioca
¼ t. cinnamon
2 T butter

Mix peaches and lemon juice. Stir together sugar, flour or tapioca, and cinnamon. Mix with peaches. Turn into pastry-lined pie pan, dot with the butter. Top with pastry. Make slits in the top of the pie. Brush pie top with water or egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 425 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes.

Except that I didn’t bake the pies. I took the recipe as far as putting the top crust over the peaches, and then I put them in the freezer.

Since the peaches were so big, I actually only used eight of them for my two pies. This left me with 10 peaches to either freeze or can. I filled up six pint jars with peaches and light syrup, and still had a pile of cut-up peaches. (I think they were multiplying.) I put the mason jars in the water to boil, and called in reinforcements – my husband.

“I need to do something with this pile of peaches, and I need to do it quickly. You have that food saver that you couldn’t resist buying sitting downstairs,” I reminded him, using a loving voice without a touch of sarcasm. So the two of us spooned the remainder of the peaches, along with the syrup, into four quart bags. We placed them in the freezer. Tomorrow, when they are fully frozen, we will commence sucking the air out of the bags and sealing them. Finally. A use for the food saver.

It was a lot of work – two-and-a-half hours worth, in fact, but well worth it. Sometime this winter, when I am lamenting the cold weather, I will pull out a pie and bake it, and enjoy a bit of “summer” in the snow.