Kitchen Tip - Peeling Peaches

It's peach season, and to me that means one important thing - peach pie. That is one of my favorite pies, although I do like most fruit pies.  The hard thing with peach pie is deciding which recipe to make because I have a few really good ones.  The easy thing is peeling peaches.  The trick is to have peaches that are really ripe.  They should feel slightly soft to the touch (but not mushy, that's too ripe.)  If they are hard, let them sit on your counter for a day or two - NOT in the fridge.  They will ripen up nicely.  Freestone peaches are easier to slice because the peach falls right off the pit.  Get it - free stone.

Here are the three easy steps to peeling peaches:

1.  Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Drop peaches, a few at a time into boiling water.  Leave in 30 - 60 seconds.  Not too long, you are not cooking them.

2. Using a slotted spoon, scoop the peaches out of the boiling water, and immediately place in COLD water.

3. When they have cooled enough to handle (a minute or so depending on how tough your hands are) take them out and the skin slides right off leaving a naked peach.

4.  (I know I said three easy steps, but technically this comes after it has been peeled.)  Slice around the peach pit, and drop them into a bowl.  If you are doing a lot, place them in water with lemon juice until you are ready to use them so they don't turn brown.

Looks good - peach pie coming later.

Say this ten times fast:  Penny Penner peeled peaches in Pittsburgh.

Kitchen Tip - Freezer Inventory

I love my freezer.  It is an investment that has saved a lot of time and money over the years.  When meat is on sale, I can buy a lot and use it over the course of a few months.  I can make meals ahead for when I know I will be busy.  I can keep produce from our garden to eat in the winter.  A freezer is a great tool to have.

Like most tools, however, it only helps if it is used correctly.  If I buy something and it migrates to the bottom of the freezer for a couple of years and then gets thrown out, it has not saved me any money.  The trick to using a freezer efficiently is to KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE.  I do this by having a freezer inventory.

I have five pages in my freezer inventory - meat, produce, meals, other and canning (which I know is technically not freezer.)  Each page has three columns - item, date, quantity.

Under item, I write what I have and the quantity it is packaged in (ie. 2 c strawberries, 6 c strawberries, single chicken breasts, 4 chicken legs, etc.)

Date is the date it is put in the freezer.

Under quantity, I write hash marks for the number of unit I have (ie. seven would be like this - l  l  l  l  l  l  l)

When I use something, I cross off the hash marks for what I used (if I used three of seven, it would now look like this - X X X  l  l  l  l )

As long as I remember to write in my book when I take something out or put something in, I know what I have in the freezer.  Then, even if I can't see it immediately, I can look deeper.  (I KNOW I have a pan of lasagna in here somewhere.)

Once a year, on a hot summer day, I take everything out of the freezer and count it and start my sheets from scratch.  This keeps them pretty accurate.  It's also a good way to cool off in the summer.

Things like ice cream I don't bother to track in my inventory.  My family does a good job keeping track of that without my help.

Kitchen Tip Tuesdays - on-line recipes

I love recipes.  I'm the kind of person who checks cookbooks out of the library to read them.  Obviously, I also get a lot of recipes on-line.  Since my computer is in my kitchen, that works well for me.

When I see a recipe on-line that I like, I cut and paste it into a Word file called "recipes".  Then I can zoom in about 500%, so that I can read it from across the room where I cook.  After I've tried it, I can decide whether it's worth printing or not.  This saves on paper, printing and storage.

Since my recipes file is over 60 pages by now, I find the recipe I'm looking for by using the "find" feature in Word.  One day I may format them all nicely and print them off for my printed recipe collection, but for now, using the monitor works for me.

Tuesday kitchen tip - muffins

To put muffin batter into the tins, use a large ice cream scoop.  It is fast, it makes them uniform size, and it gives them a nice rounded top.

Mini muffins could use a small scoop, the same one you would use for drop cookies.

For more great tips, check out one of my favorite sites, Tammy's recipes.

Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Use a potato masher to crush fruit.

This is useful for making jam.  Soft fruits like strawberries and peaches crush easily.

It is also good for bananas for bread and muffins.

I suppose you could do that to make chunky baby food, but by the time my babies can handle lumps in food, I just let them gum it and make a big mess.