Canning Peaches

I had 20 peaches from my weekly CSA bag plus about 3 lbs of peaches left from my fruit share the week before. No way we'd get through them and my attempts at freezing raw peach pies and baking them in the winter had mediocre results (I could never reduce the liquid that was generated from the frozen peaches when it was baked resulting in a really soggy pie). I pulled out the Time Life Preserving book from the awesome Time Life Cookbook series that my Mom and Dad got me for my birthday last year. What great ideas it had in it...I love these books.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that canning peaches is easy and I ended up with 3 Qt jars full. Here's what I did...

1. Sterilize the jars in the dishwasher
2. Blanch the peaches to get the skin off easily (or so I thought...it was still a total pain in the ass). The book said to score the bottom of each peach with an X, boil for 30 seconds, put into an ice bath to stop cooking, and then peel with the edge of a paring knife. I had 2 peaches of the 30 or so that peeled in 3-4 strips...the rest had bits flying here and there and I ended up using the paring knife to basically cut the skin off.
3. Halve the peaches and pull the pits out (also a pain in the ass).
4. Soak in lemon water while waiting for canning, if necessary (I was totally disorganized so it was necessary).
5. Prepare a simple syrup - I used 2 cups sugar to 4 cups water (soak in water first, then bring to a boil to dissolve sugar). It seemed like a lot of sugar to me but it ended up divided amongst 3 Qt jars. There was another option that had 2 cups of water to 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup sugar. I'll try that next time.
6. Pack peaches cut side down in jars, but not too tight. Pour syrup over peaches. Leave about 1/2 inch headroom at top of jar. Cover with top and lid and boil, covered, for 30 minutes.