Apples!

For three years in a row now I have done something with a large amount of apples.

The first year I lived in town and a neighbor had an apple tree in their back yard. I noticed they were not using the apples and asked if I could pick them up... I got my 5 gallon buckets out and filled them up several times over. After much peeling of apples with a potato peeler, chopping out the cores with a knife, and finally cooking down the good parts of the apples I was able to make applesauce and apple butter in a crockpot. I boiled the peels and cores and had my very first attempt at making jelly... and it was a COMPLETE FAIL! I also made up apple pie filling which was TO DIE FOR! Everything (except the 'jelly', which was thrown out) went in the freezer.

The second year I picked up one of those fancy Pampered Chef apple peeler & core things (for $5 at an estate sale) that takes the skins off and cores out in a matter of seconds per apple!!! Another great thing I picked up at a yard sale was a canning pot! We were on our own property then which has two apple trees... and last year we had an abundant crop... but being 5 months pregnant and low on energy, I didn't do more than a few batches of apple pie filling. These were canned and stored on my shelves in my nice size pantry.

This is my third year doing apples... and I'd love to say that the apples we did came from our own yard but we got NOTHING this year! I'm not really sure what happened, but obviously something wasn't right with our trees. We are hoping to fix this problem and get them producing again next year. This year's "Apple Factory" (as I've come to call it) came from the local Aldi when they had Gala apples on sale for $1.29 per 3lbs. and I bought 30lbs. In about an hour I had them all peeled, the good parts thrown in a large cooker I bought earlier this year specifically for making large batches of applesauce or cooking down peaches, etc. I sorted the cores and peels and cooked them in separate pots to make juice which I later used to make 3 batches of Apple jelly... and this year they it was amazing jelly!!! (Of course I had practice making different flavors of jelly last year and earlier this year under my belt, but still.) I canned the remaining juice.

This year, of of 30lbs of apples, I ended up with: 3 quarts of apple juice,11 pints of apple jelly, 7 quarts + 1 pint of apple sauce, and about 1 quart of apple butter. I am QUITE pleased with the turn out!

Here are some pictures from this years Apple Factory:

I had almost a bushel of apples (bought 30 pounds).

This is my big cooker. Not sure how much it holds, it its a lot!

Once the apples were cooked I used a potato masher and made the apples into applesauce.

I am looking forward to the 2015 Apple Factory so I can do this again!