The Making of Applesauce and my beloved parents!

Today is my parent's 41st wedding anniversary!

A meaningful thing on this day that I want to write about

canning applesauce, as my parents have been making applesauce for years.

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My Dad, when we kids were young, used to do a lot of the work

himself while Mom tended us kids.

Now they do it together and there is no better applesauce than theirs.

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My Dad esp. love the Spy Apple, which

I was not able to get here. 

I dream of going to an orchard that has them someday!

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My Mom and Dad not only make applesauce, but my Dad

has always been gardening and has grown many 

tomatoes and green beans over the years.

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They blanch the beans and keep them in the freezer, 

they have canned tomatoes and tomato mushroom soup

over the years as well. 

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Sometimes I will call home 

(I often call my Mom once a day, just to talk, it's a huge blessing)

and my Mom will have heated up some soup for herself 

and Dad that they canned earlier that year.

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Well, this year I finally was able to get apples

and can them myself, using a waterbath canning method,

as opposed to pressure cooking, which is what my parents and

my parents-in-law do.

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So a run down of what we did and what worked and what did not....

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What we learned:

1. when cooking down the apples, check often and once they are becoming 

soft and more like applesauce, one has to be careful to not burn, to add a bit of water

and stir a lot.  I realized that the sauce itself will start sticking to the bottom and burn

very quickly if not attended to.

Once it starts to have this issue, even after adding a cup or less of water,

it will need to be checked within another minute of this to keep it from burning!

2.  Our first pots of apples did burn on the bottom and
cleaning the pots delayed us a good hour I would say total 

as we could not use the pots again to cook down more apples until they were clean!

3. Put the apples remains (I call them apple poops, I know, very mature! :) ) back through

the Kitchen Aid Fruit and Veg Strainer for a second go as some of the apple flesh 

was discarded the first time through.

4. Be careful to have a ratio of sweet to tart apples.  

I totally forgot about this and got some very sweet tasting applesauce as a result.

What happened as that we had half a bushel of tart Winesaps and then half a bushel of everything else

and we dumped the Winesaps in the newly cleaned sink full of water first

and then the rest and did not realize that we were taking more of the sweet apples first

without proper ratio for sweet/tart when cooking our first apples down.

My Mom later told me they are not only careful in keeping the right ratio at all times,

but they use an old electric turkey roaster to keep all the applesauce hot

together so the flavours meld together even more.

I realized my mistake a bit too late but will have to work on that for next time, 

D.V.! 

5. I think I want more tart apples than what I had this time.

We used tons of Stayman Winesaps and a good amount of golden delicious,

some cortlands, some macouns and I think others.

I need perhaps NO golden delicious next time and need to research more

on what apples are tart and what ratios my parents try to do in making their applesauce.

What was wonderful:

1. The kitchen Aid Attachment made the applesauce wonderfully.

No hand-cranking. Saved so much time! 

2. Making the Applesauce with a friend - much easier to do with someone than alone!!!

3. Having a great return - canned over 15 quarts of applesauce!

4. I was able to label the esp. sweet ones so that I will know which is which.

5. I labeled each lid with a sharpie as I am sure my parents old me that you can't reuse 

the canning lids after using them for canning - so those will be regulated to the many

things I use mason jars for dry food storage. I was glad I thought of labeling them,

as then they will not get mixed up with new ones!