Applesauce

Several years ago when I was still married to my first husband I escaped to my Aunt's house in Wyoming with my then only two kids and begged her to teach me to make and can applesauce.

At the time I had a two year old who are like a bird and one of the only things she would eat was applesauce. It also seemed a LOT easier than learning how to can salsa or make jam. I was so silly back then.

Ahem.

This weekend I decided that while my dreams of planting appletrees this year did not come to fruition I would still make applesauce. And apple butter. I actually made carmel apple butter.

The apples we local, bought at the nursery down the road from us. I bought half a bushel of Jonathon and half a bushel of Jongold. Note to self: perhaps a bushel is too many apples.



That's a lot of apples in total.

I happen to own a foley mill bought at a garage sale for $1 but I also own a kitchen aid. I will admit, I tried to make the applesauce after cooking them in the foley mill first.

It was taking too long.

So I ended up using my Kitchen Aid mixer to make them into pulp and them using the mill to make it smooth and keep out the debris of apple cores and peel etc. It worked well for me.



I spent 8 hours on Saturday and another 1 on Sunday because a)my kitchen in small, b)my canner only holds 7 pints at a time and c)apple butter takes longer than I had anticipated. But in the end I ended up with the equivilent of 21 pints of applesauce and apple butter.





Feels pretty satisfying overall. But next year I'm employing child labor for the foley mill. That thing sucked the energy right out of me.