Applesauce Adventures

We survived last week, canning applesauce 3 out of the 5 weekdays.  The adventure of picking our apples out at the orchard was a fun experience, but I don't think you will ever catch me canning applesauce again unless someone can let me in on the secrets.  I am not against hard work at all, but when my yeild is very low after many hours of work, I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.  

We ended up with 22 quarts of applesauce, 12 quarts of chunky applesauce (cooked in the crockpot), and 30 quarts of apple slices (for pies, cobbler, struddle) along with 15 hours of work and a sticky kitchen for the week.  My sister-in-law and I tag teamed this project together and so we split our totals between the two of us

We ended up getting FREE apples through a connection with my brother-in-law.   It was a fun experience and didn't take long with 2 husbands hard at work, 2 wives running buckets of apples back to the car, and 2 cousins off playing on the swingset and filling up their tummies with apples

Allie and Cam off playing on the swingset at the apple orchard.  The apples they kept eating were not inspected prior to eating.  I think they got ate a few rotten ones

Our first day was a little chaotic.  We weren't sure which method of applesauce making we were going to do.  We ended up trying the crock-pot, the "foley", and the attachment to the Kitchen Aid

As you can see the kids were having a blast

Miss Brynn was enjoying herself. She was getting into the apple box and trash can of apple peelings

One of our days, the kids would not go down for naps.  The two were getting along quite nicely upstairs, all was quiet, and then Allie came downstairs. Allie came walking into the kitchen with her swim suit.  A little light bulb went off in my head, wondering how the hec she got her swim suit out of the top drawer in her dresser.  Well, not only was the swim suit out of the drawer, but every article of clothing from every drawer, and every book off the bookshelf.  It looked like a warzone had hit upstairs, along with the downstairs apples mess...but we survived!