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