Second Chance for that Pumpkin

Don't forget to give that sad pumpkin a second chance in your compost bin!

When Life Gives You Apples

When life gives you apples, make applesauce!

I recently bought 2 bushels of apples from a local farmer.  Do you know how many pounds that is? It's about 100 pounds of apples!!! I thought it would be a really fun project to tackle with the kids and we set up an assembly line. Mason cut the apples in half and passed them to Maya. Maya would cut the core out and pass it to me. I peeled them and passed them to little Madelyn. Madelyn would throw them in lemon water to keep them from browning. Everyone was in charge of chowing down on the apple peels.

Next, we had to boil the apples to make them soft.

After that it was into my handy dandy Blendtec.

Then, into the canning bottles to be processed. 

It took about 4 hours and we barely made a dent in our 100 lbs of apples. My feet were swollen and I was exhausted and overwhelmed thinking about processing the rest of the apples! 

Luckily, a friend came to my rescue and let me borrow her MAGIC applesauce maker! It was amazing! It was so quick and easy that I was wishing I had more apples to process.

With this magic device, we just boiled the apples and threw them in, cranked the lever and out came the apples sauce. Then we put them in the canning bottles to be processed. Voila! 5x's the apples in about the same amount of time.

The Magic Machine! Food Strainer and Sauce Maker

And my studly little Mason making applesauce by himself. 

I have been learning lately that I need to start working "SMARTER" not "HARDER" 

Do a bit of research and asking around next time and find out the best ways to can your own food!

~Marisa

Asbestos Awareness Week

Oops....we missed it, Abestos Awareness was last week. We were contacted by Cameron, his wife Heather was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare cancer which only known cause is asbestos. Please take a moment to check out their website here

Good luck to you Heather and Cameron and thank you for raising awareness about asbestos.

~marisa

 

Seed Catalogs

Do you remember getting the JC Penny catalog every December? Looking through it used to be one of my very favorite things to do at Christmas time. Those days are gone, does JC Penny's even have a catalog anymore? Anyways, I'm older and hopefully wiser now, so I now love receiving the Seed Savers Exchange catalog in the mail. I spend hours looking through all the seeds, just like I used to look through all the toys. I circle the seeds that look interesting, just like I used to circle the toys I wanted to get from Santa. I dog-ear the pages that are the best and most beautiful and interesting. Do you love the seed catalogs like I do? Which ones are your favorites?