Applesauce Day!

Well, I'm awake and posting at 4:30am because I am unable to sleep.  Hannah is spending her first night away at camp, and the forecast was calling for severe storms and strong winds to come through around midnight.  Since she is terrified of thunder, I was worrying about her even before going to bed last night.  I woke at 1:30 and decided to look at the radar, and I haven't been able to sleep since then.  So, I decided to just get up.  Thankfully, it looks like the severe weather will not affect her/us, though I am hoping for at least a little rain for the garden since I planted some new seeds yesterday.

I also did this yesterday...

41 finished pints of homemade applesauce

... made applesauce!  And a boatload of it, if I do say so myself.  This was my first time making/canning applesauce, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  Earlier this week I bought a bushel of Summer Rambo apples from Ryan's Fruit Market (where I'm hoping to get another half bushel of peaches for canning today).  The lady there told me these apples are good for sauce, and after tasting the finished product, I would have to agree.  I started by washing the apples in a sinkful of water with vinegar and then quartering the apples for cooking.  No need to peel or core them because I borrowed a Victorio strainer from my friend Sue, which takes care of that nasty work for you (see well-worn box in the background).  I cooked 1/4 bushel at a time in my big 16-quart stockpot, along with about 3 1/2-4 cups of water.  I learned with the first batch to stir every 5 minutes or so, unfortunately I burned the bottom of my pot to learn that lesson!

Slicing apples

Once the apples cooked for 40 minutes or so, I added a bit of Splenda (1/2-3/4 cup) and some cinnamon for seasoning.  Sweeter apples probably wouldn't require any sweetener but these were a bit tart, which is fine with me since I like them that way.  Then they went into the top of the strainer.  You turn the little handle on the side and get applesauce down the chute and yucky waste stuff (good for compost!) out the front.  This thing works amazingly well, and I'm thinking I need to get one for myself!

Running cooked apples through strainer, waste out the front and applesauce out the side

Finally the sauce goes into jars for canning. (Notice the stacked boxes of Ball jars in the background.)  I was planning to process them in a water bath, but when I figured out I was going to have so many pints I asked my mom to bring down her pressure canner.  It makes quicker work of canning since the jars process for a shorter time and her canner is big enough to allow pint jars to be stacked two deep.  So we could process 16 jars at once, which made the process go much faster.

The first jars, I ended up with 41 pints

One of my goals for this summer is to "put up" lots of good fruits and veggies for consumption during the colder months.  I've already processed one half bushel of canned peaches (16 quarts) and am hoping to do two more batches the same size.  Earlier in the summer I also made strawberry jam and canned 24 half-pints, some with Splenda, some low-sugar, and some sweetened with honey.  I also want to can diced tomatoes and make marinara sauce and salsa to can.