Making Applesauce

I went out into our back yard and picked some apples last week.  There were a LOT of apples, seems it was a great crop for us.  But the two of us could not eat all these apples before they went bad.  

These are from our tree.

Added some from the fridge that weren't the best flavor raw.

Here's the finished product, 8 pints and 4 half pints, no sugar added.  I use these for fat free baking and with pork chops and pork tenderloin.  It was lots of work but worth it!

Canning -- it's a hit!

My mom and I took some time last week to do some canning.  I had lots of apples (too many to be truthful) from our dwarf apple tree in our back yard.  We also bought some peaches to try.  I had to go in search of a water canning kit and was successful here at home.  I really didn't want to order on line.  We bought our canning jars and set sail on a new adventure.  Well, it was new for me anyway.  My mom used to help my grandma can the produce from a big garden we had when we were little.  But that was too many years ago for her.  So we learned it together.

Here are the fruits of our labors:

We made cinnamon applesauce, apple pie filling and peaches.  The peaches aren't as pretty as we wanted.  We didn't pack enough in the jars and learned a lesson on that one.  They'll still taste delicious.  We were happy all of our jars sealed.  We're ready to go again next week and found some fun recipes to try.