Kids' Corner: Spiced Peaches

Every summer Miss Katherine would pick bushels of peaches and preserve them in jars with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and other spices which she kept secret. The jarred peaches would last all winter. They probably would have lasted a lot longer than that, but they were always eaten by the end of winter.

~from Holes, by Louis Sachar

It's been a long time since our last Kids' Corner, because it turns out our kids are pretty busy with playing piano and baseball and school and theater and karate and friends. But here we are with today's featured author, Jonas Trach:

Jonas is a ten-year-old boy who will be starting fifth grade in September. He likes to show off his karate skills, sometimes in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. Below is his account of making spiced peaches, which were inspired by Miss Katherine's prize-winning spiced peaches in the book Holes, by Louis Sachar. 

(He asked us about making these months ago, and now that the peaches are in, we could finally give it a try. In the book, the "recipe" is described only as quoted above. See if you can spot what Jonas chose as the secret spices.)

Miss Katherine's Spiced Peaches

I wanted to make spiced peaches because it sounded delicious and it played a big part in the book. I don't want to tell you more because it will spoil the book. It was easy to make.

Step one. Put two cups of water in a pot. 

Step two. Put one cup of honey in the pot. It was hard to squeeze all that honey into the cup:

Step three. Put a half cup of sugar in the pot and mix it up while it heats up:

Step four. Put [parentally peeled, pitted, and halved] peaches one layer at a time in the pot of syrup. Heat them up for three minutes. 

Step five. Take the peaches out and put them in the jar:

Put another layer of peaches in the syrup and repeat.

Step six. Then you put in a half a cinnamon stick, 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg, 1/8 teaspoon of cloves, and a tiny pinch of allspice. And a slice of ginger:

Step seven. Get a funnel and put the syrup in the jar. Put the wooden spoon handle in and get the air bubbles out. Then we put the lid on it:

Step eight. Put the jar in the boiling water for 25 minutes to kill the bacteria and suck the lid onto the jar. 

Make them in August when the peaches come, and eat them at Christmas or somewhere near there.