A few of our friends are really good cooks. So, we’re starting a “Guest Chef” series on cookography. First up is Carolyn’s father, Bob, who made peach preserves from peach trees in their yard…

It all started 20 years ago when I was visiting a client in Everett, MA. Everett isn’t in the country, but my client had a couple of peach trees in his tiny back yard. It must have been this time of year [early Fall] because the peaches were ripe and unbelievably delicious. Sometime later, he brought two young trees, only 2-3 feet tall and not much more than twigs, to my house, and I found a nice place in the yard–where there’s plenty of sun–to plant them.

In the first years, there were few, if any peaches. I had never tried this before, so I was skeptical. The trees eventually got bigger and had beautiful blossoms in the spring. The buds became small peaches, but often, by the end of the summer, the squirrels had eaten most of the fruit. Once or twice, I tried putting nets over the trees. Every few years there would be a good harvest, but some years we went hungry.

By the time the trees were 10-15 years old, they were in a position to predictably produce so many peaches even the squirrels couldn’t eat them all. This year, for example, one tree ended up with only one ripe peach. But it fell to the ground, and a squirrel ate a good chunk of it before I found it. The other tree, however, produced hundreds of peaches, and there were several friends, relatives, and other neighbors who partook in the wonderful fruit it produced.

Since we started eating the peaches several years ago, it seems we have tried a new recipe every year. One year, friends came to make peach ice cream. Bev made peach cobbler in the past, and this year she made peach crisp. Of course, we always have peaches on cereal. But this year I surfed the net for peach preserve recipes. I found several, all variations of the same theme. People said making preserves is hard, but it’s actually intellectually easy. The hard parts are peeling a lot of peaches and standing in front of the pan for upwards of an hour, gently stirring the mixture almost constantly. Although the recipes generally agreed that the ratio of peeled peaches to sugar is 2 quarts to 6 cups, when it came to adding the sugar I never really measured, and I’m sure I reduced by 50 percent the amount of sugar called for. Nevertheless, it was enough to drown the peaches in sugar, and in that state, I put the mixture in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours in a covered container.

The biggest surprise was opening the container and finding the mixture had become very watery. The sugar must have drawn the water from the peaches because I never added any. I immediately set the burner temp high enough to get the mixture to a boil as soon as possible, but once the boil was achieved, I began stirring and turned down the heat to reach a very low boil, not much more than a simmer, but certainly enough for the moisture to start evaporating. I wasn’t this careful on the first batch. I had the mixture boiling faster and hotter. As a result, by the time the mixture was getting thick, it was starting to caramelize. The finished product is quite dark and harder to spoon out – but delicious.

While the mixture was cooking, I put clean jars and covers into hot water to bring to a boil to make them sterilized. I removed the jars from the water, dumped some of the water from the pan, and put them back in standing up. That way, the jars are hot when I’m adding the hot preserves, and they won’t crack. After filling them, I wiped the jar and sealed it with the cover. I was then told to wrap the jars in newspaper and store them in a dark place to cool slowly. The lid’s dimple on the unopened jars are pulled in suggesting they’re properly sealed. I made a total of about 5 cups of preserves which should get me through the next 12 months to the next peach harvest.