Apples are done

It took me a couple weeks, but we finally got all of the apples that we were planning to preserve taken care of.

We bought 5 bushels of York, Granny Smith, and Ida Red apples from a school fundraiser.  The apples came from a local farm.  Five bushels was a lot more than I originally pictured.  

One bushel

 We couldn't even fit them all on the breakfast table.  We had three on the table and then the bags were on the benches with the other bags we had left over from our previous canning experience the week before.

Peeling by hand wasn't so bad once I set up a system like the week before.  I would peel a large pile into a big platter and then go take care of those apples.

I started with apple pie filling.  I had to order more of the cornstarch-like product that is needed for canning and I was sure to order a lot so that I'd always have some on hand and then I got to work.

Apples and Storage

I woke up this morning knowing we had to get those apples taken care of.  It turns out that making apple sauce is really easy!  Luckily a neighbor loaned me a sieve to attach to my mixer and we ran to Target to buy a grinder so this made it even easier.

The first recipe that we tried only had us core the apples before tossing them in a pot for awhile and then tossing them through the sieve.

The first batch was a little thin compared to what I like, but man it tasted good.

This was the stuff that the sieve filtered out.  It was all the seeds and peels with the juice squeezed out.  Pretty interesting.

I even realized that I could sit in the living room and peel while I watched the football games.  The oldest snapped a picture of me hard at work, with Faith just waiting for me to toss her some apple peels.

We put a lot of peels in the dehydrator with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon and I'll slice up the rest of the apples and dry them as well.

We managed to get through a full box of apples (40 pounds) and about 15 pounds from the second box.  I already told the woman that we bought them from that I think I want another box before our order from another source comes in next week.

Once we had all of that done, I finally enlisted the boys' help to carry the boxes of jars down to the basement storage room.  Last week, the oldest and I built this shelf.  It's not quite done yet because I need another 2x4 to finish the lowest shelf, but we were able to fill one shelf with all of the tomato products and we put the jams and peaches on the top shelf.

Then I moved another shelf into the room to fit all of the other jars.  I'm not sure if I realized just how many things I had canned this summer until I started filling the shelves.

Peaches

Pickles 

Some of the apple sauce and canned apple chunks

Pie Fillings 

I plan to can a lot more apple slices and then to do some apple pie filling with the next batches.  It may look like we have a lot, but really it doesn't seem like it would last very long with these two boys and considering how many cases of jars I purchased during a recent clearance sale, I have a lot of work to do still.  We'll be building a couple more shelves in that room soon.

Apples coming out of our ears

Apples are the next thing that I planned to can, and probably the last thing that I would have a chance to can before all of the fresh produce is gone.  I ordered 4 bushels of apples from a fundraiser at the youngest's school but they won't be coming in for another week or two.  Then I heard about an apple festival fundraiser that was happening about thirty minutes away from us, and when I asked if they had apples, they confirmed that they did.  

So off we went.

The oldest was not happy when we got there and I told him what we were getting.  He was more unhappy when I told him that we would be canning all of these apples this weekend.  

We bought two boxes like this, a foot deep.

This will be the practice round for when the other orders arrive.  Wish us luck.