peaches!

Went to a 'sale' of sorts in someones house on Sunday.  They've set up a little business selling other people's homemade stuff.  Good idea and some of the things were very nice and quite professionally made and presented.  (And some of the English sellers really ought to have learnt a bit of French first if they want to sell to the local folk, or at least learnt how to use 'google translate'.)  I bought a second hand jigsaw for us all to do (Where's Wally?!).  Well, nice though everything was, there wasn't really anything that I either needed or couldn't do myself.  My mother bought a nice pottery cheesboard though, so we did contribute. 

However, that is not why I'm telling you about it.  The bargain of the day for me was a large load of free home-grown peaches!  They were sitting by the door when we arrived, two buckets full, with a 'help-yourself' notice on, although for some reason I didn't really like to, but the woman running it was quite insistant that they must go, so I took a whole bucket-full in the end!  Well, I wasn't sure how much I'd need for jam, although you'd think I could tell having made so bloody much this year. 

Well, when we got home I weighed them and it was 10lbs!!!!  Blimey, I'd been a bit greedy I think!  Looking up recipes I found one for peaches in Brandy and having found half a bottle of brandy in the back of the cupboard I made up two jars of that.  The rest of them I've chopped up and are currently sitting in sugar and lemon juice and ginger waiting to be made into jam tomorrow (ran out of time today).  And in the end I didn't take too many as I've used about 4lbs for the jam, but the rest of it has unfortunately been ditched because they were too bruised for eating.  Which is why I ran out of time to cook the jam - took ages to chop up the peaches and chop off the bad bits and re-weigh and replace and all that faff.