Making Applesauce

We had seven bushels of apples in the garage needing attention.  We got through about two-and-a-half of them yesterday making applesauce.  It was a long day — from 9am to 7:30pm with no break.  Even in my working life, I canned applesauce because the flavor is so much better, but it is a lot of work.

We have lots of Cameo apples because that's what they had at the U-Pick place, but they are bland.  We added McIntosh for flavor.

Everybody pitched in — washing apples and running the apple-peeler-corer and food mill.  We sliced up enough apples to fill the four-gallon stock pot and cooked the apples down.  It took about 30 minutes to bring them up to a boil and another 30 to cook down, stirring every two or three minutes. 

After running the cooked apples through the food mill, we filled quart jars with sauce.  The jars boiled in the water-both canner for 25 minutes.  Each batch made seven quarts.  The left-over pulp went into freezer containers for applesauce cake.

After four batches, at about 4:30pm, we had 28 quarts of applesauce and 9 containers of apple pulp.

As she was spinning the handle, one of the twins asked me how people made applesauce before food mills. I had no idea, but I suggested that back then they didn't can in jars either, so everything was different. It got me to thinking about the lives of women who had to do these hug jobs by themselves over a wood stove. I had two or three people helping all day and it was still overwhelming.  It's old fashioned and quaint to us, but I'm so grateful for food mills.

Still able to stand, we made one more batch for apple butter.  After running it through the food mill, I added cinnamon, cloves and allspice and cooked it down for another two hours, stirring every two minutes. The smell of spices and apples in the house was a preview of the holidays.  Tomorrow we'll have some on toast.

Before breaking things down and cleaning up, the twins offered to make pie crust if we'd do some more for apple pie.  It was an easy offer to accept.  At the end of the day with aching legs, back, and arms, two beautiful pies came out of the oven.  One of the twins jumped up to do the serving and I had a piece of pie presented to me on the prettiest place she could find.

These were apples from our area, but not grown on our land.  Next year will be different.  We planted fruit trees that have grown a lot already.  Each of the four apple trees are expected to produce 3-5 bushels when they mature in the next year or two.  Whereas now we are dealing with seven bushels, then we'll have a dozen or more.  I'll put more in the root cellar for fresh eating in the winter.  We'll build a bigger dehydrator and dry more.  I guess we'll have more apple canning days.

But this morning, as jars cool on the counter and containers sit in the freezer, we're not working on apples.   We ate my favorite breakfast, a recipe from my favorite cookbook that requires applesauce — Baked Oatmeal from Simply in Season.  The kids were quiet while it quickly disappeared.  Today I will do Pilates to loosen up my back, attempt some power-rest, and schedule the next canning day.  There are over four bushels out there still.