Peachy Delights

I started home canning peaches a couple of weeks ago with beautiful, large peaches from the Niagara region.  At $45 per bushel which works to a price of $28.13 per hamper (5/8 of a bushel) or $8 more than the price per hamper of pickling cucumbers, the peaches were not cheap.  Tomatoes and cucumbers are usually available by the hamper; apples, pears and peaches by the bushel, and other produce by the quart (1.1 L) or lb for home canning or freezing purposes.

One of the ways to recoup the cost of buying produce is to supplement it with home grown produce.  Another way is to make gourmet style products that you wouldn't find in a regular grocery store.  Pictured are four of the gourmet style products I made from the peaches.  From left to right: peach jam made with QuickSet, peach salsa, peach chutney and summer salsa.  Not pictured is the second batch of low sugar peach jam made with Pomona's pectin and the peach syrup.  In total, I had a yield of 32 - 250 ml jars of peachy gourmet delights that if purchased in a specialty food shop would have a value of $4 to $5 per jar (total value $128 to $192).  I also had a yield of 7 - 500 ml jars of sliced peaches.  All in all, a lot of nice peach products took their place in the pantry at a fraction of what they would have cost if store bought, if you could even find them in the grocery store.  I will be discussing each of the peachy gourmet delights here over the next week.

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