What We're Making: Peach Butter...and I Have a Bad Attitude About It...

It's no secret around these parts that Mr. Wonderful is a mad scientist. He loves to cook, he owns way too much kitchen and garage gear, and he lives to disassemble things when they break. Whether he's mixing mortar or sourdough starter, anything that feels scientific gets him all dreamy-eyed and twitterpated.

So it wasn't a big surprise when he informed me he was going to take a bunch of our ripe peaches and make peach butter.

He's made jelly before, and of course there was the wine-making madness back in Hollywood. But fruit butter was a new undertaking and, being the devoted wife I am, I offered to help. For the record, there is no butter in fruit butter. I have no idea why they call it that. It's really just fruit and sugar. They should just call it Peach Tooth Rot.

Anyway...

I couldn't help but make about a thousand dirty jokes while I was helping. Mr. W: "I'm going to make some peach butter tonight." Me: "I got your peach butter right here, baby." And so on and so forth.

We began by cutting x's in the bottoms of the peaches and blanching them in boiling water. Then they were given a little ice bath and we divided them up to peel.

There might not be anything more disgusting than a de-skinned peach. I imagine holding one is similar to holding a freshly harvested kidney or gall bladder. However gross they felt, it didn't stop me from carrying on with the dirty jokes. Mr. W: "These peaches are so slippery!" Me: "I'll show ya a slippery peach..." Sorry, Mom.

Once all of the peaches were peeled, we added them (4lbs worth) to about 1/2 cup of water and 3 1/2 cups of sugar and let it simmer until the peaches were soft.

Then Mr. W busted out one of his favorite pieces of lab equipment—the hand mixer—and pulverized them until they were smooth. They continued to cook until the mixture was thickened.

This is about where I remembered that I don't like to cook.

I was in charge of sterilizing the jelly jars in a pot of boiling water and all of the sudden I felt this overwhelming hatred for the kitchen. Why would I be using every pot in the joint to make something I could go buy at the store? My attitude became bad very quickly.... And Mr. W told me I should go sit in my flower room (AKA our guest room that has all my girly stuff in it). Instead I sat nearby and calmed myself with Pinterest.

After about forty minutes—or four days, I can't remember—the peaches were reduced enough for Mr. W to spoon them into the jars.

He then sealed up each one, boiled it again and then did an overnight test without the screw portion of the lid on so we could make sure all the seals held.

We ate some of his butter on some steamed bao pork buns today and it was pretty delicious.

That said, next time he decides to do a big experiment in the kitchen, I probably will plan to have something really important to take care of in my flower bedroom...

What We're Making: Pomegranate Jelly

Now that we're four whole days into the New Year, I thought I'd start a new little posting series on the blog. Although he hasn't "made" a single blog post yet, Mr. Wonderful is always making something in our house (often with my help) so I thought I'd start sharing some of his creations here. Who knows, maybe they'll inspire some of you!

This week's creation came as a result of receiving homemade wine jelly from my parents for Christmas. Once we ate it, Mr. W was hooked and decided he should use the many, many pomegranates his dad had gifted us to make his own batch of jelly. Thus began our kitchen's transformation from culinary laboratory to crime scene...

Mr. W took on the tedious task of de-seeding the pomegranates while I watched the season premiere of The Bachelor. AKA, Crazy Nutbag Chicks and the Winemaker They Love. No we did not add the asparagus pictured above to any jelly. This was a pee-friendly recipe.

Using the tomato grinder I bought last summer from Williams-Sonoma, Mr. W then ground all the seeds to collect their juice without getting the bitterness of the pits.

I had to document the camouflaged kitchen helper. He lays on that rug and we can barely see him, which means his tail has been stepped on many a time.

All that grinding covered the kitchen with a fine mist of purple juice. We mopped the floor 3 times during the process.

See what I mean? Looks like Dexter's been in our house.

Our All-Clad runneth over with juice and pectin. I think... There might be sugar in there, too, but Mr. W isn't on IM right now, so I can't confirm. Oh, and see those peppers over there? Those are from our backyard and Mr. W used several of them to add a spicy kick to some of the jelly jars. He thinks they're jalapeños, but I've never seen a red one like that before.

Farmer Maris carefully sterilized (dipped in boiling water with kitchen tongs) each of the jelly jars we purchased at the grocery store.

Then he carefully filled each jar with his trusty ladle and screwed on their lids.

The jars were then added back to the pot of boiling water so that the lids could form airtight seals.

A few minutes in the pot and voila! We have a bajillion little jars of delicious pomegranate jelly!

I'm not certain where Mr. W got his recipe, but if you're interested in trying to make your own jelly, here's a link to one that sounds similar: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pomegranate-jelly/detail.aspx