In a contest between peaches from NJ and peaches from Beijing, there is no contest.
Jersey peaches are the best. I say this of course, without having ever tried Georgia peaches. But every summer, the peaches we get around our hometown are great. This week, Sarah and Kaitlin attended the local Peach Festival, the highlight of which for me is definitely the homemade peach pies. This made me think of our peach picking expedition last summer to the town of Ping Gu (平谷), just about an hour outside of Bejing’s Chaoyang District. I think we were all looking for a piece of the US/Jersey summer experience after a couple months in China, i.e. peaches, peach pies, and peach jam. So we all headed out there with Judy’s cousin Lily and her daughter, Isabel.
Soon enough, we were tipping the scale with about 30 lbs of peaches and were on our way back home.
In Beijing, white peaches are readily available, while the yellow varieties we’re more familiar with are either rare/expensive or nonexistent. The white peaches we got were honey sweet, but lacked the fragrant peach-y flavor of the ones we get back home. We did end up making some nice but very simple peach jam, though. It’s as simple as peeling the peaches and reducing them down slowly with a bit of sugar and lemon juice. We stored the jam in glass jars had jam for breakfast over the next few months (considering our lack of expertise in the canning department, we just threw the jars in the freezer. If you know what you’re doing when it comes to canning stuff, feel free to school us in the comments!)
Back in NJ, Sarah and Kaitlin are making peach pie today. Check out the recipe!
