Canning Day - Apples

I am currently sitting at work - night shift tonight.

This is the quietest part of my day though... I spend the whole day canning APPLES!

On Friday night I went to a game night at a friends house.

They had three 5 gal. buckets of transparent apples from their tree

and talked me into taking one home!

Now, what was I going to DO with all these apples? Hmm??

I worked all weekend, so they sat here and got a little overly ripe.

I got the bright idea to make applesauce and can it!

I called up my mom and asked to borrow all her canning supplies.

(Thanks Mom!)

Here's my supplies:

Unfortunately, my apples were too mushy to use the apple corer/peeler.

That made my work a lot harder and more time consuming than I'd hoped.

I started about 10:00 am and was still working on it at 5:30 pm when my husband came home from work. I think he thought I was crazy,

BUT here's what I got done!

• 8 Pints of Spiced Applesauce
• 3 Pints of Caramel Apple Jam
• 1 Apple Crisp

For my Spiced Applesauce, I used the simple recipe from the Blue Ball Book of Preserving and tweaked it a little.

1. Cooked my apples until soft
2. Transferred to my food processor to mash them up
3. Placed them back in saucepan and added a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon and nutmeg
4. Brought apples to a rolling boil, while stirring
5. Ladled sauce into hot/sterilized jars leaving about 1/4 inch at the top
6. Placed jars back in the boiling hot water bath for 20 minutes

For the jam, I used Ott, A's recipe, Carmel Apple Jam,

from her blog, A Latte with Ott, A (hosting Canning Week this week! Check it out!)

Doesn't it look yummy?!

And let's not talk about how after I added the pectin to my apples,

I realized I had NO brown sugar and had to make a run to the store, okay?? =)

And finally, my apple crisp. I'll have to add the recipe for it tomorrow when I'm at home again. It's one of those oh so simple, but very good recipes. I could probably guess the whole recipe, but I won't... just in case. =)

(Half of this was gone already by the time I left for work tonight)

And last but not least, my poor Little Guy was feeling neglected apparently because mommy was not paying enough attention to him.

So I got the bright idea to bring in a kitchen someone gave him quite a while ago from the garage. He had lots of fun "helping" mommy in his "BIG house" (which he was calling the kitchen).

I gave him a couple of my metal measuring cups and he used them like pots and then a plastic liquid measuring cup. He also enjoyed taking my apples out of the bucket and sticking them in all the little cupboards! haha So cute!