Apples! Apples! Apples!

My sister gave me two huge boxes full of sweet juicy apples the other day! I don’t know where she gets them from, but each year they appear on my front porch – and I’m very thankful that they do.

It’s a lot of work, however. Bryan and I spent the entire day Monday processing them. Thank goodness Monday was a holiday – coincidentally, it was Labor Day – so we didn’t have to take a day off work. Mother helped us this year, even. It was fun to spend the day with all three of us together.

Our first task was to peel, core, and slice 12 pounds of apples in order to make two batches of Spiced Apple Pie Filling. Mother and I worked on that together while Bryan got the sugar-cornstarch-cinnamon-nutmeg sauce ready. While that was cooking, he got all the jars and whatnot ready for the canning process. Each batch had to be split into two parts since we only have so many pots & pans – but eventually we got them all done. We can now have these yummy apples on our Sourdough Pancakes each Sunday.

Once we got that mess all cleaned up, we got ready for our next mess: Applesauce! This was a lot easier, since we didn’t have to peel or core the apples first. We simply squished the apple cutter tool onto each apple, tossed it into a pan, and boiled it until it all got soft. That then got run through the food mill to separate all the stems, seeds, peels and other unwanted stuff out. Then the whole mixture goes back to the stove to heat up again so it can be put into the hot jars (we only broke one this year) to be sealed and canned. 

We have so many jars now! I can’t wait to start eating them…