58 this morning, occasional clouds all day so not as warm as yesterday. Chance of showers tonight. Praying that it will be so.
I think I mentioned that a friend gave us a couple bushels of apples last week. We made applesauce with the yellow ones first as they were a softer apple. Then today we finally got the red ones done. They made up into 13 pints of apple pie filling and 9 quarts of applesauce. I saved some of each kind for eating too. What a splendid gift! My friend made applesauce with hers, but I will take her some of the pie filling as a thank you.
I usually freeze my apple pie filling but since the freezers are chock full, I decided to try canning it. I bought a two-pound bag of Clear-Gel a while ago and found that it goes a long way. After all the cherry berry filling and this apple, I still have almost half a bag left. But I must say, it is a lot easier to just freeze the apple filling! Making it took a lot of time and many big pots. But it looks so pretty, and tastes great.
We pulled out the old apple peeler/corer/slicer to prepare the apples for the filling and Larry was impressed with how well it worked.
I can't use this with our own apples as they have too many imperfections and the apples have to be nearly perfect for it to work properly, but it certainly was a time saver today. Tbe recipe for the filling came from The Canning Club group on Facebook, a group that stresses using safe canning procedures. There are many canning groups on Facebook but most of them are not so careful about checking that recipes follow current approved canning guidelines. This group's administrator is a stickler about that, which i appreciate.
I ran out of quart jars, so the filling went into pints and the applesauce into half-gallons. Since this is destined for next year's apple butter making, the large jars are fine. The applesauce is a pretty pink color because we cooked the apples with the skins on, which will just add color to the apple butter.
Leaving you today with this old recipe from The Autumn Book by James Reeves which I am very much enjoying reading. I've not tried this, but if you do, let me know how it turns out.
Anyone who deals with apple prep is my friend. I hate the peeling coring and slicing these days. That recipe is certain mouth watering. So delicious are apples!
ReplyDeleteI love anything apple. Wonderful work getting all the apples processed.
ReplyDeleteI love anything apple. Wonderful work getting all the apples processed.
ReplyDeleteThose apple peeler/scorer/slicer are great aren't they. I remember spending an afternoon in a friend's kitchen making chutney with apple's off her tree, she had one of them and they make the job so much easier.
ReplyDeleteThose jars of apple pie filling look amazing, lots of tasty goodness to come in the future. I used to have a apple peeler/slicer/corer and they really do save so much time don't they.
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