Peaches!

My husband's parents are here for a visit, and we were very busy yesterday canning peaches. Colorado produces wonderful peaches, and my mother-in-law loves to come see us in late summer and can Colorado peaches for her use in the winter in a freezing part of the midwest. Unfortunately, Colorado peaches are still not really in season (the ones we found were yellow and hard) and cost $1.50-$2.00/pound, so we ended up getting California peaches (ripe and yummy, but not from Colorado) for $0.99/pound at Walmart yesterday. She bought nearly 60 pounds of peaches!

The produce worker at Wal-Mart was a young guy who asked her curiously what she was going to do with all those peaches. She told him, and he responded by asking, "What's canning?" She tried to explain, but it's a little hard to understand what's involved if you've never seen someone go through the process of canning. It's long, hot, sticky, and rather costly if you have to pay for the fruit. But it's worth it! Home-canned peaches are much better than industrially-canned peaches. And we used some of the leftover peach slices to make peach cobbler last night; it was too late to eat it, though, so the tempting dessert is going to be calling me from the refrigerator all day.