Peaches come from a can

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the 20 lbs. of peaches that I bought at the Farmer's Market this morning. In typical Amber fashion, I decided that I wanted to can some BC peaches, so I just went out and bought some without any regard for how many jars of peaches 20 lbs. would be. Turns out it's 20 pint jars worth. That's too many peaches! So, I guess I'll be making pies/cobblers/crisps or canning some peach jam/preserves too.

As I was perusing through The Joy of Cooking looking for recipes today, I had to stop and think about how I even got to the point where I'm canning anything. Everyone in my nuclear family, including Mom, Dad, and Sister A, can cook. They all make delicious food, always have. As a result, I never really cooked anything before I moved away for college. I didn't have to.

After 2 years eating dorm food (which I didn't like, but I had no choice in the matter), I moved into an apartment with the SO. I knew the basics of cooking, but I depended heavily on spaghetti and meal-from-a-box type stuff. In fact, I'm still not a huge fan of spaghetti since I ate so much of it back then. Same with lunchmeat and granola bars from the surplus store.

While my cooking skills improved with time, it wasn't until I moved to Saskatoon in July of 2007 that I really started progressing. You see, cost of living in Canada, especially this far north, is much higher than in Michigan. Convenience foods are typically too expensive for me to justify on my graduate student salary. So, I learned how to make a lot of stuff that I would have just bought in Michigan from scratch.

The higher cost also applies to restaurant food, which used to be a favorite luxury of mine. (Oh, how I miss East Lansing!) However, restaurant food in Saskatoon is, on the whole, pretty disappointing. I quickly figured out that I might as well learn to cook my favorite restaurant foods, since I wouldn't be happy with the restaurant version here.

Last summer, after flirting with home preservation by making various freezer jams for a couple of years, I bought everything I needed for home canning. I pretty much blame this on one of my close friends here. She made this delicious sweet basil jelly that you basically have to make at home. You can't buy it in a store. Anywhere. As long as I was canning basil jelly, I figured I would try my hand at sage jelly and dilled green beans.

My first attempt at canning went pretty well. It was hot. It was a lot of work. It didn't seem like that many jars of stuff came from all that work. Everything I canned was absolutely delicious, though. Probably worth it, I thought. Since it was pretty late in the season, I put the canner away for the winter.

And now I'm sitting here contemplating my 20 lbs. of BC peaches.