One canned food I have started to add to my food storage is canned Peaches. My 3 year old daughter loves fruit and especially peaches. Peaches seem to be the canned fruit that we use most in our house by a long shot.

Canned fruits are a great comfort food to store, especially if you have kids. Fruit is nutritional and sweet tasting, that is a win-win in food storage. Of course you get some sugar with canned fruits too but I don’t mind a little sugar.

Most canned fruit should be good for 2 to 3 years from the date of production. I try to use canned fruit within two years from the date of purchase to be safe. They may not be bad after 2 years but the quality deteriorate fast after that. It is best to store your canned fruit in a dark place with a temperature less than 76 degrees to get the maximum shelf life. If you canned the fruit yourself the shelf life may be different than this, I haven’t researched self canning much yet.

I plan on getting into canning fruits and other thing this next fall. I have some close relatives who know the canning process, which is good cause I don’t. I planted 2 peach trees, 2 apple trees, and a cherry tree in our back yard this last fall in hopes that in 2-4 years we can have good fruit producing trees. Hopefully I will have the canning process down when they do produce fruit.

For now, I am just buying canned fruits by the boxes from Costco, I spread out the costs by buying only 1 box of canned fruit a month and slowly over time I will have a good supply of canned fruit. If you find that you are eating most of the fruit before you buy your next box, you may need to buy 2 boxes a month.

I, as mentioned earlier in my blog, I believe in using the foods that you store so that there are less surprises when you have to use your stored food. You can eat fruit straight from the can but I think it is best to find ways to incorporate it into the foods you make.

Some other things you could use canned peaches in: Cobbler, muffins, salads, oatmeal, sweet salsa, dessert topping, smoothies, cake, rice pudding, pie, jam, jello, and on and on. I have a few recipes that I have incorporated peaches into that I will post at a later date, and I will be on the search for more now that I store them. Feel free to tell me what you use canned peaches for in the comments section below.

Recipes with Peaches:

Whole Grain Peach Pancakes

I hope to share a few more recipes in the near future.