For seven quarts, 2 cups of CJ is about 10 times too much!! I think it may be a typo. I think a half cup, or 1/2 cup would suffice. Clear Jel has a bit more thickening power compared to regular corn starch. If it were me, I would mix the Clear Jel with a little water or juice as a slurry, and pour some into the simmering peaches and stir, let it thicken after a minute, and see if it needs more. Some like fillings that are loose and a bit watery, while others like it to stand up once cooled in a pie, so it doesn't run. Its your option as to how much, but 2 cups is way too much and you get rubber!! If the peaches are 'lost' in the thick paste sauce, they do shrink quite a lot and exude a lot of juice, so that explains why you have so much 'sauce' compared to solids. To help reduce this, strain out the liquid before cooking and simmer it with some dried peaches, to rehydrate them, then add that back to the fresh peaches. They don't require very much cooking so a quick boil and only a little stirring would help keep them in one piece. The sugar amount is to your taste. I can't have much sugar so I use Splenda. If I find the taste to be a bit bland, I may add some acid blend to bring up the tartness and then sweeten a bit more.

The lemon juice tends to give a taste you may not want. Ascorbic acid is great for peaches. Its also called Fruit Fresh, and in a recent post, I mentioned that K-Mart has some. To make a filling, suggest you should use Clear Jel which is much more stable in the thickening of a pie filling. You can make a looser filling, and add the starch when you use it, but its much easier to thicken to teh right amount when its being made. Buy some Pepperidge Farm puff pastery sheets. These, once slightly thawed (keep it cold), can be cut into quarters and then a spoonful of filling goes into each. Fold over diagonally. Pinch the edges of the dough. Then refreeze or bake. Canning pie filling cannot use flour as a thickener, or even regular cornstarch, or tapioca, or other unstable thickeners

The Ball Blue Book, or the Complete Ball Book (can't remember which) lists the one with raisins and apples; I didn't like the sound of it either (I have both books). I was discouraged until I found the one that Dave listed at NCHFP, and it was just plain peaches and very tasty. No wierd ingredients. I've also made the cherry filling from there, and plan to make apple too. I think you'll like them (or at least your friend will).

A pint would only fill about a 6-7 inch shallow pie. A quart may fill a 8 inch pie, and about a quart and a pint may fill a 9 inch pie. All of these are dependent on whether the pie pan depth is regular or deep dish. Without actually knowing the dimensions (diameter and depth) can't know for sure. I don't like flat pies, and tend to over fill by piling on in the center. Be sure to use ascorbic acid if your freezing as they can darken to an unappetizing brown in no time in the freezer. Don't add any thickener either, unless it is one that is designed for freezing, like Freezer Flo.