Apple picking

Last week we picked apples at a house owned by the parents of some childhood friends of my husband.  His parents live only about half an hour from where Dan lived when he was a kid.  We went up late one morning, and within an hour had amassed quite a collection of apples.

The picture above is after we had already cored about two bags worth of apples for apple juice.  Once the apples are cored, juicing apples with a steam juicer is easy peasy.  You just have to be patient for the juice to come out of the apples.  Each of the two batches took about two hours to juice.  I canned 6 quarts total.

Check out the color variation in the apple juice.  And it is a pinkish color, not the yellow color you get from stores.  Maybe because I don't filter mine?

I had some juice left over which I used to make mint apple jelly.  Emily helped me pick spearmint leaves from the herb garden.  Tabitha helped by looking pretty and not doing too much fussing.

So pretty. 

Canning

This summer I learned to can.  I canned raspberry freezer jam a couple months ago.  After I was all done, my mother-in-law told me that she didn't think the glass jars I had used should go into the freezer.  So, we ate it all with-in three weeks; three weeks being the life expectancy of freezer jam in the fridge.

Well, it was just over three weeks.  And I gave a couple jars away.  But we were close.

Since getting back from Nebraska, the blackberries that climb all over the pool deck have started to rippen.  Which makes the plethora of vines that spill over the side of the deck, across the entrance, less annoying, and also means we have more than enough to make jam.

So I canned up some regular (cooked) jam.  Seven little jars, and one big jar that went straight into the fridge.  The contents of which have already started to go into our tummies.  Mmm.  A perfect balance of tart and sweet.

I also made some tomato sauce a couple days later.  Lots of onions, garlic, green pepper, basil and oregano went into the sauce.  Hopefully it will be tasty.  One of the jars didn't get quite full, so we will probably eat it soon.  I have also decided that we need more tomatoes the next time we do tomato sauce.  Six pints didn't seem like nearly enough.

Also, check out all the different kinds of jars my mother-in-law had.  There is only one pattern repeated (although the one on the left is just plain, so it might have been a re-used jar of something or other, not a jar that started it's life as a canning jar).  I didn't notice all the patterns until I set the jars out for the picture.  Pretty cool, huh?