Not Just Applesauce

The Teen and I spent a surprising amount of time canning all types of goodies this harvest.  Both of us were neophytes, so we made a cozy, surprisingly competent team.  I could almost hear my mother muttering things like…”not quite so much, that looks good, are you sure you are doing it right and Wow, this is good.”

These are country apples picked straight from our neighbor’s tree across the street to our table, so our first step was to cut out the worms.  Luckily for us, we did not find any wiggling worms, just a few places where they had been.  Those apple pieces went into the chicken feed pile, as chickens are not as discerning about eating apple bits with worm particles as we are, in fact that is their favorite part.

Love the rose-red color of these apples!

For those of you who have made a lot of applesauce you are now probably screaming, “You left the skin on!!”  Well, it turns out that it is not just our country men neighbors that have all the neat tools.  Our Sweet Neighbor Sue provided us not only with the apples, but an applesauce grinder/saucer/make-the-job-easier-tool.  No peeling apples, very little waste!

We almost ran out of pots and room on the stove.  No, we didn’t plan on washing the walls of the kitchen afterward from all that steam, but the kitchen is a tad cleaner now, because of it.

How cool is this!  Applesauce on one side, skin on the other.  The whole job easier and a fun tool to use.  The Teen was a cranking expert.  We added just a tad of cinnamon and nothing else, for a wonderful sweet batch of beautiful pink applesauce.

 We feeling pretty proud of ourselves as our harvest canning combo came out to:

Applesauce
Beets
Piccalilli
Pears
Beans

Not too shabby!