**Before I get to today’s post**
My email is not working and hasn’t been for a couple of days. Please send all email for me to:
joscountryjunction@gmail.com
If you have sent email and I have not answered, please resend to that email and please change my email in your email address books to the new one listed. I currently cannot open my Outlook email program and don’t know if I can fix it. Fingers crossed I didn’t lose all of my contacts.
Now to today’s post.
My friend Carla, (Yep, Carla from Longarm Quilting Inspirations) messaged me the other day and asked if I wanted apples. Hmm. YES??
I’m sure you all have been asked if you wanted extra garden produce from a friend or neighbor. Part of you really wants some and the other part of you knows you signed yourself up for some work if you say yes.
Then the next dreaded question…how much do you want? Hmm. Again, the produce is free…so how much work do you want to do?
After seeing Carla’s tree, loaded with apples with enough to give away to every person she knows, I ended up taking more than I originally planned on taking. Oh, I wish I had thought and taken a picture of her tree. WOW.
Carla said she had Courtland apples and they were a little sour yet. She was afraid a wind would come and knock them all off as the tree was so heavy with fruit. She said now was the best time to get them.
I got home with the apples at about 3:30 pm and decided I was going to start working on getting some of them processed.
Applesauce is a fairly quick and easy way to process a lot of them. This is how I make applesauce…
Quarter apples. Leave the peel on. Leave the core on. You can even leave the stem on. Cook the apples on the stove until you can poke them as you would if you’re boiling potatoes. Then run them through the machine. The junk comes out one side and applesauce comes running out the other. It’s so easy.
I’ve had my… Sauce Master for about 20 years. You can find them HERE on Amazon. I primarily use it for making applesauce. It works for tomatoes too.
Applesauce is easy in that you can freeze it-no canning required…but you want, processing the jars by canning is okay too.
I had a few plastic containers that I immediately filled and froze. I put a glass container in the refrigerator.
I went on and made three ice cream buckets of sauce too.
The applesauce was tart but not bad at all. I’ll likely add a touch of sweetener to it when I serve it.
In between processing the applesauce, I cut up enough apples to make 8 pies.
I also put things together to make two batches of crock pot apple butter. I’ll share that recipe soon…and I have some baking planned too. WOW!
One might think I used up all of the apples being I got so much done…I didn’t. It was 8:40 pm when I quit and it took me an hour to clean the kitchen after all the preserving. Uffda. That was a long time on my feet in the kitchen. When my head hit the pillow, I went right to sleep.
Many thanks to Carla for the apples. It’s going to be a treat to pull some applesauce, apples, and apple butter out of the freezer this winter…and the baked treats we’ll be having for the next couple of weeks will be so yummy. I’ll share the recipes with you!
Apples are such a wonderful fruit to use in so many ways and crock pot apple butter is a favorite here too. Your applesauce is a wonderful color too, so many times it turns dark.
Cortland apples are one of my favorites – Yummy!!!!
Wow!! It really looks like you made quick work of a good portion of those apples, Jo. What a tasty treat Carla shared!
Yum, yum, yum!!!
Many years ago, neighbors gave us a huge amount of fresh apples from a family member’s trees. Like you, I made applesauce and froze sliced apples which got used in pies, cakes and apple crisps over many months. It was wonderful to have all those apples at the ready! Reading your post brought back some great memories for me!! Thanks for sharing!
Wow I think you had many, many apples. Last year we ended up with abundance of apples because my brother’s apple cider press wasn’t working correctly (after we had done a bunch). I made the crockpot apple butter (besides the sauce), and it is so good! I filled my crockpot, cooked overnight and used my immerse blender, added a little sugar and spices. I canned some of it. Much less sugar than jam and delicious!
I never turn down free produce. I was gifted okra the other day and quickly had it sliced and frozen for using this winter. I would love some apples!!
You have been blessed by a good friend. And I like her name lol!
Do you add anything to the apples so they do not discolor before freezing?
No I don’t add anything to the apples for discoloring before freezing. I always add cinnamon to my pies so that apples aren’t white in the pie anyway. Makes it one less thing to do.
If you have a Foley Food Mill those work very well also. You can grind the entire apple up in there and dump the refuse after you have found a batch. I know how much work is involved but boy are they ever good when winter rolls around. I have a wonderful recipe for Apple Butter using a low temp in the oven for several hours and a quart of apple cider mixed in along with cinnamon sticks, anise seed and sugar. If you would like to have that, which makes a lot more than a slow cooker does, I will send it to you. It cooks down into the most beautiful dark red color you ever saw and tastes marvelous.
Would love your recipe for Apple butter, believe it or not I have never heard of Apple butter! I going to collect bucket loads of apples from a friend next week and was thinking what I would do with them after the usual ways. Please share, kindest regards Christina from sunny UK.
J.Janice Russell, that sounds wonderful. I imagine that I am not the only one who would appreciate your recipe for apple butter. Thank you!
I cook the apples in the Instant Pot when I make applesauce. 3 lbs of quartered apples, 1/4 cup of water and a pinch of salt and some sugar and cinnamon. Pressure cook for 5 minutes and then natural release. When it has cooled a bit I run it through a food mill. Easy peasy!
How wonderful to get free apples and Cortland’s are what my mom used for making pies. They are hard to find here in TN. Thanks for sharing your sauce master item, I’ve never heard of it. Your family will benefit from all those hours of standing in the kitchen.
I’ve been processing free apples this week too. So far – 6 pints of apple sauce, 6 – half pints of slow cooker apple butter, 4 quart bags of frozen apple slices and 8 quart bags of dried cinnamon sugar apple rings. Drying takes about 6 hours a batch, so I can fit 2 batches in a day. We have little peeler/corer/slicer machine that makes uniform slices which I also use to cut up frozen pie/crisp slices. I make my apple sauce and apple butter a bit differently – I wash, quarter and core the apples (I had to check for ‘critters’ in these apples), put them in my slow cooker and when they are cooked down a bit and soft, put them peels and all in my blender. The peels grind up and are indistinguishable in the apple sauce/butter and adds a pink hue to the apple sauce. I returned it to the slow cooker, and heated it to canning temp, and canned it up! While this was going on I made a batch of ‘yard sauce’ to freeze and a batch of roasted vegetables for supper. It has been quite a production!
Such a great gift! We’ve still got another month until apple season arrives here. I’m not even sure if they grow Courtlands here – I’ll ask. We usually pick Jonathon apples for baking and apple sauce and Honey Crisps for dried apples and snacking. You had a productive day!