Live and Learn – Applesauce

Posted by Cindy on September 9, 2008

I suppose this is what I get for going back on a promise to myself.  After canning well over 200 quarts of veggies and freezing over 30 gallon bags of fruits and veggies, I decided I was done.  Finished.  No More.  I made a promise to myself and let everyone in the house know that I WAS NOT canning or freezing anything else this year.

Then came a great big bag of free apples.  I certainly couldn’t turn away a great big free bag of apples.  And, hey, why not add one more staple to the pantry shelf while trying my hand at a new canning skill – applesauce??

According to the canning recipe, I had just the 21 pounds of apples needed to make a canner load of seven quarts.  That big ol’ bag didn’t seem like it would be too hard to cut, core and slice, UNTIL an hour and a half later when I was finishing the last few.  Cooking the slices until soft didn’t seem like it would take a long time, UNTIL 45 minutes later when I was still stirring the 12 quart cooking pot full of sliced apples.  And sending the apples through the food mill didn’t seem like a daunting task, UNTIL I nearly pulled a muscle trying to get a teaspoon of sauce to come out.

After pulling out the blender (plan B) and finally having a sauce resembling what I buy in the store, I was excited to know that I was almost there.  Applesauce, here we come.  Only 2 hours and 45 had passed!  (insert eyes rolling)

Would you like to see the fruit of all my afternoon labors?

Yep, four quarts.  Only FOUR quarts!  In all, including the canning process, I spent almost FOUR hours canning FOUR quarts of applesauce!   I’m considering this a lesson learned.  I imagine I’ll appreciate the 99 cent cans of applesauce I buy from Save-A-Lot a lot more, too.