Summer Can Can

It's already September. And even though summer weather may still be lingering for awhile longer, the plant world knows what time it is, and is in the throes of its final burst of color and energy before it retreats into the taupe expanse of autumn.

It was with this seasonal urgency in mind that I gathered an unusually large haul of late summer goodness at the farmers' market. In one hand was a bag of crimson dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes, and in the other, a brimming bag of candy-sweet white peaches. My intent? To take an edible snapshot of this brief moment of the year when the long shadows and hazy heat of summer have just put their last energies into these two ephemeral fruits.

I'm putting them into glass, where they'll stay, preserved, until they can be unscrewed to brighten a dreary January next year.

The final purposes for these peaches and tomatoes might be entirely distinct, but the process of trapping them into jars is almost precisely the same.

Loosen up in the hot tub, little tomate.

With a bowl of ice water at the ready, and a large pot of boiling water rolling, gather up the fruit of choice. Load them up in batches onto a frying spider and allow them to descend gently into the spa. After about 45 seconds or so (or longer, in the case of any stubbornly taut-skinned peaches), scoop them again with the spider and plunge them into the ice water. This Finnish sauna-style trick shrinks the fruit back from their skins, and will make it easy to peel them cleanly off, although a paring knife could still be useful.

Shrinkage can be a good thing

Tomatoes can be peeled and left whole

Peaches will need splitting and pit removal

Now your fruit needs a sterilized vessel and a liquid in which to be suspended. The liquid can be almost anything, as long as your overall pH remains below 4.6. For tomatoes, I'm using water, with a bit of lemon juice for acidic insurance, and a few leaves of sage or oregano from the garden. For the peaches, a mildly-sweetened simple syrup (the kind you'd mix up for your fancy cocktails) will do just fine. If you're clamoring to reproduce childhood memories of Class A Insulin-Assault Heavy Syrup, then feel free to crank up the sugar/water ratio. Science says that the maximum saturation rate of sucrose in water at ambient temperature is 67%, so go as crazy as you like. I like the actual flavor of peaches themselves, so 1:2 worked just fine for me.

Into the jars

Cram your fruit into the hot jars, fill to near the brim with your packing liquid of choice, wipe the rims, secure the lids, and process the cans under boiling water as usual. At sea level, my tomatoes needed 50 minutes, and my peaches went for 25.

And there you have it - a bare minimum amount of effort, and you've bought yourself a lovely present to be opened when the weather has turned malevolent and the memories of dark red summer are faded and distant.

Suspended animation