September 17, 2008 – Apples, Apples Everywhere

The wet spring produced a bumper apple crop.  We’re relatively absent orchardists as far as spraying goes, so besides some dormant oil in the spring and being fanatical about picking up the deadfalls to feed the animals, our apples for the most part are not things of beauty.

But we get enough to eat, and preserve.  This year we’ve made raspberry applesauce, peach applesauce, blackberry applesauce, and apple applesauce.

Since the freezers are full, we don’t have much room for frozen apples for winter pies, so I tried canning apple pie filling.  It required a type of ingredient that isn’t readily available, something called Clear Jel A, a type of starch that holds up under the processing time in the boiling water canner.  The finished jars look wonderful!  Linda mentioned that someone at work wanted to buy one – my answer was – he couldn’t pay me enough to part with one of the seven jars!  Depending on how the time goes, I’d like to make some more.

one year ago…”Turkey Roosting”.