You want a quick way to check how my life is going?
Go look in my storage room.
Last year the upright freezer was empty and the shelves were bare.
This year the freezer has 8 pie fillings, 3 ziploc bags of cookies, a dozen pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (there were 2 dozen but I sent some back with Reagan yesterday), several loaves of peach bread, 4 bags of grated zucchini (for brownies or vegetarian chili) and batches of frozen peach puree for various recipes. The shelves of the storage room have six quarts of apple-pear sauce and 8 pints of apple butter.
When I am happy I store food. Weird but true.
The whole last week I’ve been processing apples. It started with a trip to the apple orchard. We’ve been going to Martin’s Hillside Orchard since the kids were little though it’s been a few years since we’ve had time because Reagan’s fall volleyball schedule always packed the weekends. If I remember correctly, the last time we went, we pulled a wagon behind us which the kids filled with 80+ pounds of apples.
That was too many.
This time it was just four of us (family outings with one kid gone feel weird, just so you know and makes for a sad picture) so I told them to just fill two grocery sacks each and we’d call it good.
Guess how much eight grocery sacks of apples weigh?
76 pounds.
Sigh.
It wasn’t Hayden’s fault. Hayden was determined to pick only apples out of reach, thus I think he only filled half a sack himself.
It took him three full minutes to pick one apple from the top of this tree.
This was the tree right beside him.
Faith and I quickly ditched the boys and went for the trees dripping with Jonathans.
We quickly filled our bags and headed back to Rich and Hayden to help them finish up with Jonagolds and Fujis. The Fujis are for eating, but I had plans for the other varieties.
First up was applesauce. Normally I use Golden Delicious for this, but they weren’t quite ripe yet so I crossed my fingers with the Jonathans and Jonagolds. The first batch was actually a little tart for my taste (I don’t like to add sugar) but that was ok, because I made it into apple butter.
You really should make some apple butter. There is no better smell at the end of the day, than walking into a house filled with the aroma of apple butter bubbling in the slow cooker. Mouth watering. You don’t even have to make your own applesauce to make the apple butter.
One of my very favorite gadgets of all time is the thingy I used to make applesauce or tomato sauce. I don’t know what it’s called … food mill maybe? but it’s magical.
You don’t have to core or peel the apples, just quarter them and cook them in a big pot until they’re soft and then dump them into the top.
Then you just turn the crank and apple sauce comes pouring out through the screen.
While all the seeds, hulls and peels plop out the end.
When you’re done, you have a big pan of hot applesauce and a disaster area in your kitchen.
That last picture is of the first batch I made which was pink from the red skins of the Jonathans - another reason I usually use Golden Delicious.
For the second batch, I had a bunch of over-ripe pears that I threw in to cook with the apples and Oh. My. Word. did the combination make the BEST applesauce ever. The pears made it sweeter and added an extra layer of flavor that’s just delicious. They also made the sauce more golden in color which people seem to like.
So now I have all these jars of home made goodness and a freezer full of pie potential and I am torn because while it’s all delicious, it was so much danged work that I don’t want to eat any of it and deplete my supply!
It’s a conundrum I tell you.
But I love pie enough that I’m pretty sure I’ll get over it.