Tuesday, November 19, 2013

What WAS I thinking?

Where I live it is a little tough to find real bargains on produce. So when a friend asked if I'd like to go in with her and a bunch of others to get a truckload of apples I was in. I ordered 3 bushels of apples. That's a lot of apples. She ordered more. I'm a wimp! A canning WIMP. Three bushels scared me and she with her 8 and 7/8 month pregnancy got 8! And canned 4 bushels of apples into applesauce in ONE DAY! I'm on day 4 and have 2 bushels to go. We are clearly less efficient.
I have a Victorio Strainer, it hasn't been out of the box since I used it on corn (to make corn soup-absolutely divine recipe) possibly 2007. A Victorio Strainer makes applesauce a breeze. I do not think I have used all 4 burners on my stove at the same time since we moved into this house 16 years ago. I have now. And it is crowded with the canner, 2 pots of apples, and an extra pot of water for the lids simmering away.
Since we also have some oranges...well not exactly but some orange fruit that is easy to peel and is small but has seeds...we decided to put that through the strainer first; got 4 bags, about 2 cups each to put in the freezer.
(This is the lemon tree after the first picking!)
Then we did some lemons, got 7 cups of lemon juice that I put in the freezer in cup portions to make lemonade later. We have a loaded lemon tree this year; last year I froze about 7 cups in 2 Tablespoon ice cube tray cubes. This year lots more lemons. :) I figured we didn't have to clean the strainer between those projects so there are bits of oranges in the lemon juice and in the applesauce. It still tastes good, maybe even better  with the addition. (I have not read anywhere that this is the way to make juice....but it worked.)
So this is one bushel of apples. The tall jars are 1 liter Weck jars. The little ones? Weck jars but not sure how much they hold; found them on sale in September so thought I'd try them. Not sure I like them, the only things that did not seal? Two of those that I had applied the seal to wrong.
Oh, we dried a few too, That will be repeated and repeated and repeated....
So now you know why I have no progress to report on my wool leaves.

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