Vegetable Gardening

[tulip]

That is wonderful, Papaver! Where do you find these things??

[papaver]

That is wonderful, Papaver! Where do you find these things??

http://zestyperspective.blogspot.com/

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

My husband and I spent the day doing apple sauce...it pretty much took the whole day at a pleasant leisurely pace.
After breakfast, we bought a bushel of Paula Red apples at a local orchard that uses very little spraying compared to others. Cost more, of course.

Anyway, DH peeled the apples on our old peeling/coring countertop crank machine. then he made pot after pot of apple sauce and I filled the pint jars and processed batch after batch of them in pint canning jars.
In the the end we wound up with 35 pints of wonderful chunky apple sauce- it didn't even need any sugar at all, it was so good...just a touch of cinnamon.

They'll be going down in the basement next to my 16 pints of sweet pickles.
Later this week I want to make another 20 pints or so of organic pickled beets....I adore pickled beets.

It was fun working together with my husband today side by side on our little apple sauce 'assembly line'....him churning out the sauce, me canning it. A great way to spend a rainy autumn Sunday.

[Grog]

Hey Lisa, can you smell the apple butter simmering in my kitchen? I'll unplug it at 5 a.m. tomorrow before going to work. I'm following your instructions.

[OakLeaf]

Waaaaah, I'm so jealous. A late frost took out all my apples. The flowers had even been pollinated - I saw plenty of bees - but I guess it was just too soon for frost-resistant fruits to have formed. All my neighbors have plenty of apples, but my tree is a later variety plus my hilltop is cooler.

I still have two quarts of last year's applesauce (one wild raspberry, one cinnamon) and I'm hoarding them, now.

[NoNo]

I made applesauce on Friday Didn't have quite the output you did, though. After taking a few apples out to make a crisp, the rest of the bushel I bought only made 7 pints. Perhaps I'll buy another bushel and make another batch. My aunt's boyfriend said he made green tomato pickles. I've never heard of them, but he says they're delicious, so I'm looking forward to trying them.

[tulip]

Okay, I am SO going to do some canning this fall. What's a good one to start with? I haven't canned since I was a kid, helping my stepmother. We did it the big, hot, messy way full bath way. Now I understand that steam canning is easier, but not good for acidic things like pickles.

I don't have enough of my own home-grown produce to can, but I can certainly buy a bushel of apples.

I do have a slow cooker (for apple butter?). Thoughts and resources are appreciated!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I made applesauce on Friday Didn't have quite the output you did, though. After taking a few apples out to make a crisp, the rest of the bushel I bought only made 7 pints. Perhaps I'll buy another bushel and make another batch.

7 pints? Surely you must be thinking of peck baskets, not bushels? A bushel is a huge boxful, and our bushel of apples made 35 pints of apple sauce.

Here is our apple sauce from yesterday: