peaches Archives | Heavenly Homemakers

I Love Food, and Talking About Food, and Sharing Recipes. Also Here is a Wiggams the Cat Update.

September 28, 2015 by Laura 8 Comments

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Last week was a fun food (and cat) week at our house. That means that we’re eating like kings (and queen) this week. Check out these raspberries we got to pick (for free, oh my goodness, thank you friends with oodles of raspberries):

groceries sept 222

That had to have been $30 worth of berries if we were to have bought them at the store, and these are by far superior quality! There are more where those came from, so we’ll be heading back to pick again this week. We’ve been eating them to our heart’s content, but look what I made with the last few of this batch:

raspberry syrup1

Simple Raspberry Syrup recipe coming up.
It took five minutes of brainless work to make that goodness for our Quick Mix Pancakes this morning.

In other (free and plentiful) fruit news, our neighbor has been sharing fresh peaches with us. Man, this time of year is delicious. We’re freezing most of these and making a lot of Peach Milkshakes.

groceries sept 224

Tomatoes are doing great for us, though not really great enough to make sauce and can it this year. We’re just enjoying them with our salads and as side dishes.

groceries sept 221

Those are my Easy {Low} Sugar Cookies you see there. They have nothing to do with the tomatoes except that they made it into the same picture. That is also a juicy steak on the plate with the tomatoes. This fall, we’re gonna grill until we can’t grill no more (aka when it gets too cold to stand at the grill).

I finally got another Bountiful Basket order last week. I’ve been unavailable during every delivery day for several weeks, so it was awesome to be a part of it again. I loaded our kitchen table with fruits and veggies! (And also some Whole Wheat Bread for our soccer trip sandwich convenience.)

groceries sept 223

This plate was too pretty to ignore, so I snapped a shot before I handed it to Matt. (He’s used to it.) That is Creamy Salsa Enchilada Casserole from Lesson 2 of the Let’s Do This! eCourse, in case you were wondering. Of course I made two casseroles that day so we could eat one and freeze another.

enchilada meal

We just got a load of apples delivered to us from “the Apple Man” also known as “the Honey Man” also known as “our friend with the orchard and honey bees.” It is always a joy when he and his wife show up on our porch. I help disperse the apples to friends, and we all make loads of Homemade Applesauce.

Malachi loves the cat…

apples wiggams and malachi

Oh hey look – it’s Wiggams (and Malachi). They like each other just a little bit. I am so happy to share that I saw Wiggams doing her job of pouncing and eating in our back yard last week. I was both grossed out and proud, but mostly proud (and pretty grossed out). Yay, Wiggams! This is why we kept you. Plus, we can’t help but love you. Who knew?

What fall foods are you enjoying these days?

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Finishing the List…Almost

August 4, 2012 by Laura 17 Comments

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Today was a beautiful, cool day – something we’ve not had for a long time! It was the perfect day to spend in the kitchen, and as my husband pointed out, it was the last Saturday until November that we will have free to be home getting work done. Ready or not, soccer season – here we come!

I sent two of the boys outside with the shop-vac and some old rags to clean out the van. Wow, did it ever need it! (Pictures not included. It was too scary and I was too ~~embarrassed~~ busy to snap a shot.) Matt sent the other two boys outside with a bucket with instruction to bring in as many peaches as they could from our tree. We were blessed with a beautiful crop this year! (Amazing, since we’ve had such little rain.)

Matt then spent quite a bit of time slicing the peaches for the freezer. For lunch today, I had peaches, leftover chicken, peaches, and a side of peaches. Best lunch ever!

In the meantime, I was making several rounds of Homemade Peanut Butter. Remember how I said that typically, when I make one batch of peanut butter, I make three or four – just to be efficient? Yup, the food processor got a work-out that’s for sure.

Instead of putting the last round of peanut butter in a jar, I used it to make a double batch of Chewy Granola Bars. These are now individually wrapped and ready to grab to take to games for snacks.

I then made some Corndog Muffins. I often get lazy with these – so they always turn out ugly. Truly, the dog is not supposed to be showing, but there they are, in all their hotdoggy glory. We’ll eat them just the same. But it sure would be nice to have a pretty picture to show you instead of well…this one.

I did not quite finish all the tasks on my Getting Ready for Fall To-Do List. I never got around to the Whole Wheat Graham Crackers or the Whole Wheat Calzones . Why? Because I did everything else on the list and now I’m tired. That’s the simple truth. I just decided to be done. My freezers are full. My jars are re-stocked. My kids’ books and assignments are ready for school. My house is clean (relatively). And several days after we finished organizing it, the Lego Room is still in good shape. It’s a miracle!

Thanks for coming alongside me this week as I worked through my list. School, soccer, gardening/canning season? Bring it on! I’m ready.

Just as soon as I clean the kitchen….

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Healthy Fruit Crisp

September 28, 2010 by Laura 94 Comments

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I think that making a fruit crisp is one of the easiest desserts to make. But that may be because of a little short-cut I like to take. Hey, I’m all for making special treats and doing it the lazy easy way.

Here’s my trick: You know how a fruit crisp has a “crumb topping”? All the recipes I’ve seen say to “add all the dry ingredients together” then “cut in the butter until the mixture resembles course crumbs”. I am REALLY not a fan of “cutting in the butter” in any recipe. It takes extra effort and makes an extra mess and now that I am all grown up and not in Home-Ec class anymore, I have become a butter cutter inner rebel. I believe we should all take a stand against things we feel strongly about. And so, I hereby stand firm on my belief and I refuse to cut in butter.

I hope you can still respect me after that confession. If you still choose to cut in your butter, we can still be friends.

As a replacement (aka lazy) option to cutting the butter into the dry ingredients in a fruit crisp, I have chosen to simply MELT the butter and stir it into the oat and flour mixture. I KNOW. And check it out…I have still made crumbs:

I love this fruit crisp recipe because you can use any fruit you want. This time, I made peach fruit crisp because it just so happens that I got to go pick some lovely peaches at my friend Kim’s house. Depending on the kind of fruit you use, you may want to add more sucanat (sugar), but I’ll leave that up to you!

Healthy Fruit CrispYum

5 cups sliced fruit (apples, peaches, pears, cherries, blueberries or a combination of all)
2 Tablespoons sucanat or brown sugar

Stir the fruit together with the sucanat and place in a small baking dish (8×8 inch).

Make your Crumb Topping…

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup sucanat or brown sugar
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/4 cup butter (MELTED, for Pete’s sake)
1/4 cup chopped nuts or coconut flakes (also optional)

Mix together oats, sucanat, flour and cinnamon. Stir in melted butter and joy upon joy, it creates crumbs with little to no effort. Add nuts or coconut flakes.

Sprinkle crumb topping over fruit. Bake in a 375° for 30-35 minutes or until fruit is tender and topping is golden brown.

Easy_Fruit_Crisp

If you’ve made and canned Apple Pie Filling, just dump it into your baking dish, sprinkle on your crumb topping and bake. SO easy!

I just have to know…are you a butter cutter inner, or a butter cutter inner rebel like me? Never thought about it before? Yeah, I figured I was the weird one with butter cutter inner issues.

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Freezing and Canning Peaches for Winter

September 1, 2008 by Laura 142 Comments

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I mentioned that over the weekend I received millions and millions (okay, maybe not millions) of peaches from a lady in town. I’ve been busy preserving them for winter and thought I’d walk through the steps with you.

Please note: These peaches were so awesome and juicy, and since there were so many of them, I felt that none of us needed to hold back on how many we ate. So, as I was standing in my kitchen peeling and slicing peaches, and peach juice was running down my arms…I was also biting into peaches as I worked, because I just couldn’t resist. Therefore, I also had peach juice running down my chin. But with peach juice all over my hands and running down my arms, it’s not like I could do much about my chin, you know? Not one of my finer moments.

Thought you might like to picture that.

If you remember, I was given four boxes of peaches. (I did share a few with some friends.)

In the past, I’ve always peeled my peaches with a knife…and that’s been fine. But I had so many peaches this time, I went ahead and tried this method of peeling, and whoa was it a time saver! Just put your peaches into boiling water for about 30 seconds…pull them out…

And those skins just peel right off!! It was awesome. Except for when they didn’t peel right off, which happened with a few of them for some reason. (Just thought I’d tell you that so that if not all of them peel right off for you, you’ll know that you aren’t the only one!)

(You don’t have to peel your peaches if you’re going to freeze them. They’ll be more nutritious if you leave the peelings on, and it will save so much time too!)

To freeze peaches, just peel, slice and lay the peach slices on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Put the pan into the freezer until the peaches are frozen, about two hours. (Or longer if you forget they’re in there.) Then put them into a freezer bag and you’ve got great peaches for smoothies and slushies!! And cobblers and crisps! (If you feel like skipping this step and simply just putting your peach slices directly into a pan without freezing them individually like this first, you can…but you’ll end up with one big gallon sized frozen peach-sicle, and you may be very frustrated when you want only part of the rock hard peach-sicle for a smoothie. Just so ya know.)

Now…to can peaches…this is what I do. There are other ways to do it…this is just the way I do it! Please be sure to go back and read Canning 101 for the canning basics!

I make a honey/water solution on my stove…which is 2 T. honey to every 5 cups of water. Heat it on the stove and let it sit warm while you prepare your peaches.

Sterilize your jars.

Take out a hot jar and put in about 1/16 teaspoon of ascorbic acid to keep your peaches pretty. Just dump it into the bottom of the jar. (Some people use lemon juice)

Ascorbic acid is powdered vitamin C. I get mine at a health food store.

Fill the jar with sliced peaches. Then, use a funnel to pour your honey/water into the jar, to about a half inch from the top. Place a sterilized lid and ring onto the full jar.

Now it’s time to give your full jars a hot water bath to seal the lids. Put your full jars into the water. Once the water is boiling, boil the jars for about 25 minutes. (And yes, this is actually a picture of applesauce jars boiling…I forgot to take a picture of the peaches boiling and I’m too tired to go can more peaches just so that I can go take a picture of the jars boiling.)

Oh, and boil your jars with the lid on the water bath pot…I just took off the lid for the picture. :)

After the jars have boiled for 25 minutes, take them out with tongs…or better yet, this cool gripping tool made especially for jars and hot water baths. Then you get to listen for the caps to seal. I can’t think of a way to blog the way it sounds…but after all your hard work, it sure is a cool sound to hear them seal! (Thhhhp!) (Or something like that!) You can be sure they sealed if you can push down on the top and it is down firm. It takes anywhere from 1 second to 30 minutes for the lid to seal after you’ve taken it out of the water.

Then, just leave your canned peaches out on the counter for a few hours or several days so that you can admire them and smile and feel happy every time you walk into the kitchen and see them. (Okay, that’s what I like to do anyway.) (Because I’m weird like that.)

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