Applesauce recipe

This is practically Week of Applesauce! I'm teaching two preserving classes; one was on Thursday (at Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living), and then a class at our local grange with a group called Preserving Traditions on Sunday! I also canned applesauce for my personal stash today- whew! Here's easy instructions for making applesauce, which is one of the easiest things to can!

Homemade Applesauce
Supplies needed:
1 large pot
2 large bowls of apples (about 35-40 apples)
Sugar (optional)
Nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon (optional)
A peeler or combo peeler/corer

Directions:

1) Peel the apples, if you choose too. I usually peel 3/4 of my apples and leave some peel on for color and texture.
2) Core the apples. either with a knife or a combo machine (very useful!)
3) Cut the apples into small pieces- the smaller they are the quicker they cook.
4) Take cut apples and put them in a large stock pot.
5) Turn pot onto 5-6 or medium
6) Add a half cup of water into the pot
7) Spice to taste, adding nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, etc.
8) Add sugar, if you desire. I usually find that 1/2 - 1 cup is enough for me
9) Occasionally stir the apples
10) Once apples reach a more mush-like consistency, mash them up with a potato masher or a spatula or some kind of kitchen tool
11) YOU HAVE APPLESAUCE!

:) Easy, huh?

saucy!

Well, the applesauce turned out well! As usual, we severely underestimated the amount of applesauce that half a bag of apples makes.

Oh well!

We got two quarts of out it.. not that bad. We still have a half bag to do tomorrow, as well as 3 pie pumpkins. I think I'm going to make homemade pumpkin pie filling and then freeze it for my Halloween party! That way I won't have to be baking pumpkins and peeling them and food processing them on the day of the party haha!

mmm mm applesauce!

the Grape Jelly Debacle

So grape jelly..


Not so easy to make. Of course, when canning, Ashley and I never follow the directions to a perfectly. In fact sometimes we are quite liberal with our canning freedoms. But that is completely beside the point!! ..right?

:)

We didn't have a cheesecloth, or a jelly bag thing or really any of the technical items needed to make jelly. But we did have concord grapes! So now we have grape soup-juice. But we're hoping if we magically let it sit overnight and try to boil it some more, that it will turn into jelly.

I think that sounds probable.

This is why I should stick to cooking. You can make shit up when cooking, and things still turn out pretty good usually.

We ended up making some attempt at jelly, and then I showed Ashes how to make my not-yet-famous-Butternut Squash soup. But it's really more of a stew. Basically you throw a bunch of stuff into a pot and then it tastes good. See- that works with cooking! So we cooked 3 pints and 1 quart of that.

I'm also cooking some apples now that will eventually be applesauce! a huge vat of applesauce.


yummm! Hopefully we'll have a few quarts of that. I might run out and get some pint jars. I just don't think a quart of applesauce is too practical. I'll never eat that fast enough before it spoils.

BUT a really exciting thing was that now that our compost bin is set up, we could compost all of the food scraps from canning!! See below:


Apple cores and peels, grapes skins, grape seeds, the ends of the squashes, etc. Very exciting. Before, all that stuff just went into the garbage! Now it can go back into my garden.... eventually.

Thank god for family!

Whew! just coming off of a LOong long weekend of home projects! Whenever my parents come to visit, we always have to have activites planned for some reason- by the time they get here we've usually got a full weekend planned! They're so experienced with house stuff too, which also makes it easy to schedule a million little fixer-uppers to do!

We worked on the yard this weekend- we put mulch on the front beds and then we edged-out a border for what we want the backyard "pit of despair" to look like. We have an area to the right of the garage that slopes downward and is covered in complete shade by a huge Norwegin Maple tree. Right now not much is growing there but my hope is to get some shade and drought-tolerant ground cover in there that is native to MI!

We also weeded and clear some additional beds in the back that were looking a bit scary!They were pretty prairie-like, which is cool, expect that area in going to be part of my edible gardens now! Here's a before:

Once we clear the garden, we smothered it, using about 8 sheets of newspaper, and then we put some half-composted leaves on top. I'm going to leave that mixture on there until the spring, and hopefully the garden will be all awesome and weed-free by then! My aunt and uncle own a farm, and they gave me some llama poop to use as compost/manure- I hear it really helps plants grow strong!

My dad also helped us sand down a few things that needed sanding, like our dining room table, and that cool canning cabinet I'm going to be using to hold all the food I put up for the winter!

Painting is coming along well. Here's what we have to finish up still:

• finish the Basement Bijou Red (Behr) and Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the bathrooms (1 upstairs, 1 downstairs) Treasured Jade (FreshAire) and Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the hallways Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the Mudroom Radiant Sun

I think I'm just going to wait and clear the beds for the Raised-bed gardens in the spring. I don't get the paper so I don't have any newspaper to smother the grass with anyway- so I guess I'll just dig it up in the spring?

Other than that, I have apples left to can sometime this week, and I'm thinking applesauce, applesauce, applesauce!