An Apple Update!

Boy, I haven't blogged in a while!  If it weren't for my Tea Talk posts, I wouldn't have blogged at all!  I had uploaded some photos from October, then never created posts for them.  So I guess I'll have to play catch-up now...

Back in October, we went to pick apples with church friends.  So we had all those apples sitting in our basement, and I knew I better process them quickly.  The M. family, with whom we spent most of that day picking apples, came over to watch me make and can applesauce.  The girls had not canned before and wanted to see how it was done.  I was so blessed to have them pitch in and do some of the work!  Here's the story...

Joseph, my very willing kitchen helper, and I started the peeling process early that Saturday morning.  I love my Pampered Chef apple peeler/corer/slicer.  It made fast work of all my Jonathon apples.  We put the slices in water with lemon juice added while we prepared the rest of the ingredients for pie filling.

Once I had enough apple slices for one pie, I drained the apples and placed them in another bowl.  Then I dumped in the cinnamon/sugar mixture Joseph had prepared, plus cut-up butter pieces.  Stir well!

Then we poured the apple pie filling into gallon-sized freezer bags.  To get as much air out as possible, I tried a neat trick which really worked.  Once the filling is in the bag, seal almost all of the zipper seal.  Insert a drinking straw and continue zipping until the straw is snug.  Suck out as much air as you can, then remove the straw and quickly seal the rest of the zipper seal.  It's almost as good as a vacuum seal, and the bags store nice and flat in the freezer.  We ended up with eight bags of apple pie filling.

The M. family helped me with the applesauce and canning portion of the day.  My arm got tired of stirring, cranking apples through the food mill, and stirring again.  I'm afraid I burned the applesauce, too!  Kelle was such a dear to help stir, crank, and stir some more.  She blessed me big time!

I sure hope the M. ladies learned as much in the same quantity as I was blessed with their help!  The first batch of jars came out of the canner sticky and messy, so I was surprised when they all sealed nicely.

The next day, after Sunday church service, I gently rinsed off each jar under lukewarm water, then dried them off.  Don't they look pretty all sitting in rows?

Blessings from that canning day:  help with apple peeling and pie-filling making, friends to visit with, ladies in my kitchen, help with canning, teaching and learning opportunities, 17 pints of applesauce put up for winter, satisfaction from a hard day of kitchen work...  Thank You, Lord, for all the blessings of the day!!


Back to life,
Christine

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