Peaches!

Day151.

A few days ago I posted my monthly shopping trip and mentioned that I scored 25 pounds of fresh Georgia peaches for roughly 50 cents per pound. :o) Today, I spent about an hour turning half of them into freezer jam. This was my first time making jam. It was so easy a child could do it. As a matter of fact, I did enlist the help of my two daughters. We all got sticky together.

The scent of ripe peaches filled the air in our home all afternoon. It was heavenly.

Being that it's summertime, many of us will come into bounties of fresh fruit. One way to extend the life of that fruit is through freezer jam. You don't need any special canning equipment and it takes only three ingredients to do. Here's how it's done:

1. Peel your peaches. You're going to need four cups' worth of mashed peaches. This was about 18 peaches for me. Remove the pits and dump them in chunks into a large bowl.
2. Mash them really well with a potato masher. I left lots of chunks in my jam because I like chunky spreads, but let your taste buds guide you.

3. In a separate bowl, combine 1 1/2 cup sugar with a packet of pectin (I found one specially formulated for freezer jams).
4. Stir together the mashed fruit and the sugar-pectin mixture. Stir for three minutes.

5. Funnel into jelly jars.     I found these lovely plastic freezer-safe jelly jars made by Ball. Leave 1/2" head space in each jar. Seal the jars.

6. Let the jam sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, or until thickened.
7. Refrigerate or freeze. The label on the pectin says that the jam will keep for three weeks in the fridge or a year in the freezer.

*I had a little leftover mashed peach mixture so I plopped it into popsicle molds for homemade all fruit popsicles for the kids.