Day Nine ~ Breakfast for Lunch and Peach Jam

I woke up this morning too full from last nights dinner to eat breakfast, so I made myself a cup of peppermint tea with my dried peppermint from the garden, and went about my day.

Monday is a day off for me, and I generally use at least a chunk of it to clean the house and do laundry. By 1pm, the house was clean and I was hungry enough to eat the lunch pictured above. I found a pancake recipe that didn't have leavening: 1/2 cup of the fresh flour we picked up in Mazomanie yesterday, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 2 Tablespoons melted butter. They weren't fluffy-almost more like a thick crepe, but they sure were good with some maple syrup on top. I also made a fruit salad of yogurt, honey, raspberries, peaches, and apple. The bacon is from The Rustic Table - it's uncured and really good, not too salty but full of flavor. The egg, of course, is from my own dear chickens. It was a beautiful, satisfying meal.

I had all kinds of plans for tonight - I was going to have some extra time to relax, maybe make some tomato paste, and finish my taxes which I had to extend from the spring.... no such luck.

At about 4pm I went out to check on the peaches that we picked two days ago. I had stored them in the garage, hoping that they would ripen. To my dismay I found that about 1/4 to 1/3 of them had rot spots of varying sizes. I went through them all peach by peach and ended up with a grocery bag completely full of very ripe almost rotting peaches. I put the rest in the basement hoping that the cool air would stop the ripening at least a little bit. Either way, I don't think they will last till next Sunday when we had planned to process them......

There was no way I was going to waste all those lovely peaches that I had sorted out, so I decided to make jam. This involves blanching the peaches, peeling them, pitting them (they are not free stone), chopping them in the food processor, cooking them with honey and spices, and then canning them. A daunting task to be sure.

Here they are with the bad spots cut out. As you can see, there were a lot. It took me till about 9pm to get them all chopped in the food processor, at which point I gave up for the night. They're in the fridge now - tomorrow I'll make them into jam and can them, and hopefully start some tomato paste as well. Erica and I made tentative plans Thursday night to freeze the rest of the peaches before they all go bad......

No rest for the weary in late August!

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