Applesauce

In addition to enjoying the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this week we put up 13 quarts of applesauce. It was a lot of work, but also a trip down memory lane. I have fond memories of helping my mom make applesauce using her hand-cranked processor she would let us turn the crank or use the plunger to push the boiled apples into the screw. 

The screw is designed to mush the soft boiled apple through the holes in processor while the skin and core get pushed out the end. It's a pretty slick unit and I was glad to be able to borrow it for our apples. We have three trees and we suspect that one is a Granny Smith and one is a gala, but we don't know what the third one is. We got about twenty pounds of apples and spent several hours in prepping and processing them. We had to use the bath canner as a stock pot because we didn't have anything else big enough. As soon as i lifted the lid of the pot and I could smell the apples i felt excited, the same way I felt when I was a kid helping out. Kanga helped us by mushing the apples down the processor. She did a great job, even when she got a gob of hot apple squirted on her face. Once we got all the apples processed we moved the stove to the garage for the canning part. I set up a table and we processed thirteen quarts, one bottle shy of two full batches. 

Again, it was a lot of work, but like my mother pointed out, you have a very real product left over. When we moved into this house and learned that we had fruit trees we were very excited. At the same time I was a little worried about being able to eat the fruit before it spoiled. I should also say that I was always nervous of eating fruit right off the tree. Mostly because I hate the idea of eating a bug. Berries, particularly raspberries, are nice in that regard. You can see if it's good or not immediately. I was really worried that we would have these trees and that the fruit would be wasted because of my hesitancy at eating it. I was also intimidated at the prospect of canning it. I remember what a process it was by asking my mother and was worried that I would do a horrible job. I'm glad that it worked out alright and in many ways the canning is easier than I thought. It's still a lot of work, but as my mom noted we have twenty three quarts of fruit that we grew ourselves. That is fruit we can use in the winter and fruit that we don't have to buy. I had to admit that sitting down to this...

was worth it.