These are the first three jars of apples I ever canned. I cooked them way to long and I'm not sure they will taste too good, but at the end of my apple canning experience I am grateful to see all the free apples stockpile for my family's future use.
This is the tree from which we took the apples. It stands right in front of my house. Because of a miscommunication Mike offered the Young Women in our ward all the apples they could pick. The Young Women came and nearly emptied the tree and left us three half boxes and a couple of others that we gave out. At first I was upset. I felt like I needed nearly every apple off that tree, but now realize there is no way I could have used it all. So I am grateful that the love was spread around the church.
As Josiah and I began the arduous task (this picture is from day one) we thought our three half boxes would not amount to much and it would be a quick job. But each day I filled the dehydrator first, then filled up the pot with apples and water. By the time it was time to go pick up Goldie I'd only completed three quarts.
I did on the other hand, learn to cook the pot for only fifteen minutes instead of two hours. Also, I found I was undercooking the dehydrated apples and should have left them in twice as long. It quickly became apparent that this was a much bigger job than I had thought.
Last week Mike finally took pity on me and together in we finished it up in one day. With his help, we canned eight quarts as well as dehydrated one batch. In then end we tallied seventeen quarts and lots of apple chips. (We love our dehydrator Dana!) We also were blessed with apple sauce, apple butter and a quart of apple pie filling that another person canned from our tree.
It was such a great big adventure that today a sister from our ward came over and we did seventeen and half quarts of pumpkin together. I am so looking forward to eating all this goodness. Lots and lots of pies are on the menu once baby Thumper appears...now I just gotta perfect my crust recipe.
2 comments:
Oh you are a good woman! Congrats on conquering the apples. Now you need to sing the Johnny Appleseed song. !!:)
1 cup flour, a few shakes of salt, 1/2 cup crisco, cut it into the flour, 1/4 cup cold cold water. Don't over mix. Use lots of flour to roll it out. There's your crust. A recipe my MIL gave me. It took me a couple of tries before I got the hang of not over-mixing it. Let me know how the canned apples taste in a pie. I've never canned either. I always just use fresh apples when I make a pie.
Post a Comment