Apple Butter and Other Gooey Stuff.

It has been two weeks since I posted last. You may as well know that my writing comes in spurts. When I get in the mood, I write like crazy, and at other times... I just don't really write. This was especially difficult in High School when I was required to write essays or written narrations quite frequently. Thus some of the them were simply brilliant, and others were not so good. Sometimes I can get myself in the mood with the right music, but as the 'right' music is always something different, that doesn't always work.

Since I posted last my family started working on a very large project. A project of picking apples off of 3 very abundant trees, and finding ways to process and use them with a very limited amount of canning jars. After some deliberation and miscommunication, we finally decided that the best way to use the most apples in the least amount of space was to make apple butter, as it was very concentrated.

So first thing, we removed the stems and chopped the apples in half, throwing them in two large roasters with water and cinnamon. After 3 or 4 hours, they were soft enough to process. We then got out the borrowed and old-fashioned food mill.

Looks pretty barbaric, huh? But it worked! We just stuck the apples with all the peels, cores, and seeds in there, and turned the wooden piece. Before long we had thick apple goo coming out that was devoid of any seeds, peels, or cores. The Dramatic One* was especially helpful at this part of the process. The hardest part was keeping little fingers out of the large pot the goo was dropping into.

The next step was putting the goo in the crockpot on high, leaving the lid partly open. After 3 or 4 hours of that, we laid the almost completed apple butter in a pan so it would cool faster, adding brown sugar, salt, and additional cinnamon. By this time it was 9:45 in the evening, and at this point canning the apple butter was just not happening. So we currently have 4 1/2 gallons of apple butter sitting in the fridge, patiently waiting to be canned, as well as multiple baskets of apples still to go.

The gooest (yes, I know, that isn't a word) part of the whole thing was when we left the crockpots on low over night. One of the boys didn't realize that the lids had to be loose to let moisture escape. So when I awoke Tuesday morning, I found apple goo all over the floor, and was afraid it would leak into the backyard, as we had that particular crockpot plugged in on the floor near the side mock-french doors. That was interesting to clean up!

So though the process is not finished, we have one major processing day done, and have learned some important things in the process. Miss Domestic,* Mom,  and I were quite exhausted at the end of the day, but also quite content with our work. And we shall have apple butter to use as Christmas presents and to enjoy all winter long! Yay!

*Refer to my earlier post My Family