MMMMM Peaches!

I was able to get my 2 year old niece Brenna to say "mmm peaches" while we were working away today. My sister-in-law, Kayla and grandma-in-law took on the challenge of preparing 3 bushels of Missouri peaches for freezing. For those of you interested in the whole process...

1. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and have a big bowl of cold water (doesn't have to be ice water) at the ready
2. Scald 5-7 peaches at a time in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes
3. With a slotted spoon, transfer peaches to cold water.
4. Peel off the skins with a paring knife (they should come off easy enough with your fingers too)
5. Slice peaches to desired size and combine 8 cup of sliced peaches with 1 cup of white sugar and 2 teaspoons of Vitamin C powder**

**Vitamin C powder can be found at vitamin stores and helps keep the peaches from oxidizing (turning brown) once they are pealed

6. Pack into plastic freezer boxes. DON'T use plastic freezer bags-for some reason it distorts the flavor of the peaches and they get freezer burned quickly.
7. Store in freeze for up to a year.

Whew! It was a lot of work, but it was so worth it! Getting out a box of peaches in the middle of January is so satisfying, not to mention yummy! We had some left over so I made peach crisp for dessert tonight.

Peach Streusel Crisp Ingredients: Enough for a 8x8 pan, double recipe for a 9x13

• 9 good-sized ripe peaches
• 1/2 Cup sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
  
• 2 TB. flour (for juicy peaches; 1 TB. for firm peaches)

Topping:

• 1 stick cold butter (8 TB.)
• 1 Cup flour
• 2/3 Cup sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease the bottom only of an 8x8 glass pan or medium casserole dish. Peel and pit the peaches, slice and place in a large bowl. Top with sugar, flour, cinnamon and vanilla, toss to coat. Set aside while preparing topping. Make the streusel by cutting the cold butter into a bowl, adding flour, sugar and cinnamon, and rubbing it through your fingers until the streusel is a coarse, sandy/pebbly texture. Put the seasoned peaches into the pan, top generously with the streusel, and bake at 350° about 30 minutes, until the streusel is golden brown and the peach juice is starting to bubble up through the topping. Serves: 3-4 (Recipe from Penzey's Spices online)



Peaches have to be one of my favorite fruits, so having a bounty of them makes me so happy! As we say goodbye to July, take some time to sit outside, listen to the cicadas sing and have a bowl of peach crisp with some ice cream!

Blessings,
e

Welcome!

So through the wonder that is Facebook, I was able to see that my friends and family had some interest in reading another blog by yours truly. The busyness of life has me caught up in many different things, but starting to blog again was something I wanted to do for some "Me time." So, what's this all about?

After taking a class last fall in anthropology for my major, I realized how much of a passion I have for food. Now I know this may surprise some, because I've always been VERY into food. But the focus of this class was "foodways"- in other words, where our food comes from. Living in the heart of the corn belt, we are surrounded by what we consider food. However, something I had never thought about was that what farmer's today are producing can no longer feed themselves or their families (the product itself, not the income). "Field corn" is more or less inedible in the condition that it's harvested in and is used mostly for animal feed and high fructose corn syrup (hfcs). This corn has to be processed extensively before ever making it to our tables, and no longer recognizable as corn. This got me thinking about our food system and the kinds of food I buy every week. It's just about impossible to come home from the grocery store without something in your reusable bags that doesn't contain hfcs or wasn't grown in a factory farm. In fact, living in America's bread basket, most likely nothing you bought came from locally sourced products! It's easy to shrug this off as just a fact of modern life, but I decided that this was something I am no longer comfortable with. As a newlywed establishing a home with my wonderful husband, we started making some changes to the way we approach our food choices, which included our finances. (I'll talk more about this in another post)

Now, what I'm not saying is stop buying food at Wal-Mart or Meijer or where ever you shop. I'm also not advocating eating ONLY organic or local. We don't eat only local or organic food, we are just trying to be more responsible with our food purchases, both in understanding the source of the food we eat and what kinds of food we are eating. Buying food at farmer's markets and trying to stay away from pre-packaged, processed food are two of my main goals. Also, by no means am I a health food fanatic. ( I didn't get the nickname "Chipster" for nothing) I just want to feed my family good, wholesome food that tastes good and at the end of the meal we can have full stomachs, but know that we have eaten food that was good for us and we supported our local producers.

I would love any input into this blog, so comments are very welcome. I hope I can stay on top of this blog even once the academic year starts, but posts may be less frequent.

Blessings and happy eating!
Erica

P.S.-For those curious about the blog title, "Emmy" is the nickname my husband gave to me when we first started dating in 2008. It's a long story, but it stuck. Just a FYI for curious folk. :)