Day 2 of peaches. That means more jam. Two weeks ago I stumbled across an old recipe of my grandmother's for peach marmalade. I have never had peach marmalade. By the time I'd come along, my grandmother no longer canned anything. She had settled into her 7 meal rotation. The only variation came on holidays or special occasions. Then she served the traditional dishes associated with that holiday.
My grandmother passed away when I was in high school. Since then I have spent hours exploring her old recipes, looking for little gems she'd tucked away, forgotten to time. Some are little clipping from magazines. Others are hand written on recipe cards. This was one of the hand written ones.
The problem with her handwritten recipes are that she included limited instructions and rarely wrote down how much the recipe should produce. Her recipes from the 1940's were often written to accommodate a family of 5. Her recipes from the 1970's and 1980's were meant to accommodate 4 families. She felt a need to not only supply herself and my grandfather, but also her children's families.
This must have been one of those later recipes. It started with 2 dozen peaches. I chopped up 6 heaping cups and stopped. I ended up with almost 14 half-print jars of marmalade. I would still be in the kitchen had a followed the recipe exactly.
I must say that this is DELICIOUS and nothing like the traditional marmalade that is mass produced. I was lucky to stumble across this recipe and it is something that I will be making every year.
