One of our neighbor kids was selling boxes of peaches for a school fundraiser a few weeks back. I love peaches and thought it would be great to have some. However, the boxes were 20 pounds or around 48 peaches…way more than we really needed. Another neighbor (thanks Corinna!)suggested we buy a box and share. I thought, 24-ish peaches was a little more manageable, but it still was a lot. So I had to figure out what to do with them and quickly as many of them were already pretty ripe.
Pinterest to the rescue and my goal was to find new recipes that I had never tried before. First up, I wanted to make sure I froze some peaches to use in smoothies. Thanks to my sister Heb, when we were on vacation with her in Tahoe, she got us all hooked on healthy smoothies and we make them almost every day. I also froze strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries or smoothies as well. To freeze the peachs, I left the skins on and diced them into nice sized chunks. Then I dipped them in a mixture of water and some lime (or lemon) juice as this helps to keep them from turning to brown.
Now, don’t just throw all those nice chunks of fruit into a bag in the freezer…you will end up with a big blob of peaches stuck together that are about impossible to break up. I put the peach chunks on a large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Make sure they pieces don’t touch each other or they will freeze together. Throw them in the freezer for a couple hours and then you can put them into a baggie or sealed container. Then when you want just a few chunks for your smoothies, you can grab them from the freezer without any work. The other nice thing about using frozen fruit is that you don’t need to add extra ice then if you like your smoothies cold.
Another couple recipes I tried were roasted peaches (we had with vanilla ice cream, not yogurt, and toasted pecans) and peach/banana/coconut bread. Last was the peach salsa and it was super easy. The original recipe also had diced green chilis but I didn’t have any, so I left them out:
Homemade Peach Salsa – Author: A Kitchen Addiction, serves: 12
Ingredients
· 2 C ripe peaches, chopped
· 1 C tomato, chopped
· ½ C red onion, diced
· ½ C cilantro, chopped
· 1 jalapeno, chopped
· 2 garlic cloves, minced
· 1 tbsp lime juice
· salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
1. Gently mix together all ingredients until combined.
2. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips or store in refrigerator until ready to serve
So, now that we’re all peachy-keen with these great recipes, I am off to find out my next cooking challenge for another WTF post coming your way very soon!
