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Show ISHOPPER'Sl CORNER By DOROTHY BARCLAY PEACH OF A TIME HOW DO YOU like your peaches? Like that first fuzzy bite you can't wait for until you get home from your grocer's? Do you like 'em peeled and sliced on your morning morn-ing cereal, or sugared and creamed fur dessert? Like peach pie? Peach ice-cream? Peach for your fruit cocktail or salad? Or do you like 'em pickled or In jam? Or canned, either commercially or by your own capable hands? Or frozen in all their prime freshness and flavor? And when do you like your peabhes? Before, during and after the peak season that Is now upon us? Aided and abetted by that favorite fa-vorite grocer of yours, you can have 'em how, when and as long as you like! Your grocer will confirm the good news that the peach crop Is not only earlier, but generally a fourth larger than it was last year! In fact, if you like big numbers, here they are peach production Is expected ex-pected to be 65 V4 million bushels and that's 12 million more than a year ago! The early peaches now on the market in such plenty are from the "peach states" of the sunny south, whence are coming three times as many as last yearl And this is Just a forerunner of the peak in home grown crop in -other parts of the country. So you have your plckl PICKING PEACHES Don't fall for that shy blush on the peach. The better buy are the creamy, yellowish mature peaches, for all your purposes. The flrm-textured flrm-textured clingstones are used principally princi-pally for commercial canning, but for home pickling they're ideal, for they hold their shape through-ou through-ou the entire process. The freestones, while not so shapely shape-ly as the dingers, are the favorites for all those table uses you have in mind for the summer, and for freezing, canning and preserving for the winter. Peaches abound in vitamins A and C did you know that? Take the yellow-fleshed fruit, for instance. Do you know that a half-cup of sliced raw peaches supplies sup-plies 15 per cent of the Vitamin A and 10 per cent of the vitamin C every adult should have daily? FREEZE YOUR OWN And now that you've bought your peaches at your grocer's, are you sure you have enough containers and sugar so you can get right to work when you lug the groceries home? A trip to your drug store is called tor, too, for a touch of ascorbic as-corbic acid (vitamin C in tablet or powder form) say Vt teaspoon to four cups of syrup, will keep that beautiful peach color from darkening darken-ing In your freezerl So now you're set for the first step, making the cold syrup S cups of sugar thoroughly dissolved in 4 cups of water. Now sort your fruit, choosing the firm, juicy peaches, the very kind you'd like to get your teeth Into, immediately. Wash the fruit, halve and pit it, and peel off the skins. None of that canning short-cut of hot and cold dips to loosen the skin, for that process softens the outer layer in frozen fruit. Then slice the fruit directly into the cold syrup in a freezer jar. Press the fruit down, and add enough cold syrup to cover It Then when the jar edges have been cleaned and dried, lids can be screwed on tightly, and your peaches are ready for freezing and storage, and that happy winter day when you take 'em out and eat 'em! |