Patience is a virtue...

...and canning applesauce is great way to acquire it!

Let's start at the beginning.


We drove to Ian's Professors house to pick apples. The drive took about 45 minutes. That wouldn't be so bad if it were 45 miles away, but it wasn't. It was about 10. But it was worth it!What kind of mother takes a picture of their child climbing a tall ladder instead of running over to make sure they don't fall??
Apple picking is...FUN!!

Then we had a busy week so we couldn't get to the apples. Luckily we had room in the back of our van to convert it into a refrigerator and the apples stayed nice and cool there.

Friday night comes along, the long awaited time in which Ian and I were determined to make any apple product we could think of. Apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie filling and had we acquired a dehydrator, apple fruit leathers and dried apple slices. We were in way over our heads. Applesauce was a lofty enough goal considering our resources, we had to learn that for ourselves.

So making applesauce is not too hard:
First Step:

Wash the Apples and the Jars
Then: Quarter the apples being sure to take off the stems, but nothing else:) (see this is easy...no patience nessecary right!?) and steam them about 20 minutes.Yummy, mushy apples!


Next: Run apples through the Victorio Strainer being sure to catch the applesauce and not the gunk that comes off the end--blek:/**To spice things up, try catching your kitchen on fire...or at least a pot. Luckily, we have a fire extinguisher in our car (McKenzie can explain the reasoning on that one) that I sprinted out to get, but by the time I got back Ian had it all under control.


And finally:

Soften the jar lids in a pot of simmering water, ladle the hot applesauce into the clean hot jars, place a lid on top, screw on the rings and Invert!
Phew! Don't let mine and Ian's goofy smiles in these pictures confuse you. Besides not being used to posing with applesaucing equiptment we were just tired. But we THOROUGHLY enjoyed ourselves! I left my kitchen somewhere around 1:30 a.m. with 12 bottles of applesauce and a fairly clean, but cluttered kitchen.

That was easy!!


Though I'm afraid as I was drifting off to sleep I began to worry if it wasn't just a little too easy...

"I wonder if you can only use the inversion (open ketle canning) method with jam?"


"Am I going to poison my family with botulism?"


"Have I just wasted a lot of time canning it the wrong way. Maybe I should have been more PATIENT!"


So, Saturday morning, my guilt caused me to call my mom (twice) and Ian's mom and I came to the following conclusion:

Open kettle canning (which is sooo easy and requires hardly any patience) IS only to be used for jams. There are some pretty nasty growths that would incurr from sloppy canning methods (like what I did) but not all was lost. We could still eat (and share) the applesauce as long as we did it soon, and kept it refrigerated AND we could re-bottle the applesauce in order to store it on the shelf.

Sooo, Saturday night found Ian and I rushing to the kitchen after putting the boys to bed to try and salvage our precious applesauce. The Process here:

Pour out the applesauce from the old jars into a pot until it boils.

Wash the jars.

Soften new lids in a pot of simmering water on the stove (though I wondered if I could have used the old ones since technically it wasn't "sealed" but since I was trying to be patient I went to the store and got new ones)

Ladle the really hot applesauce into the clean jars, put on a lid, screw on the ring and tighten, and the most important step: PROCESS!

To process the jars we used the boiling water bath method (since we didn't have any fancy steamer canning equipment). Hopefully, our resourcefulness of using a tall stock pot will not prove us unwise in a few months when fur is growing on the applesauce.
So into the pot of boiling water they stayed for 20 long minutes (and this is were we really had to be patient. The water was boiling so hard that we had to add water along the way so the tops stayed covered but we had to be careful not to add too much or else it would lower the temp. and we would have to wait for it to boil all over again)


After 20 minutes we turned off the stove, waited for the water to cool a bit and set them out on a towel. We did this one more time but decided two batches of shelf stable applesauce would suffice, and the rest we would share with neighbors, with a fair warning: "This applesauce LOOKS like it has been canned, but it hasn't. Eat it now and keep it in the fridge!!"
Ian and I re-confirmed with one another (after we both took naps on Sunday) that it was all actually fun. We did learn our lesson in patience and believe it or not we are ready to do it again next fall (only once, not twice next time!)



Children are also another great way to learn patience...and I know certain family members who would be disappointed to see a whole post without pictures of the boys so here's to you!
Finally a picture that captures Ben's little dimples!!
Jacob loves going to church. Sometimes he thinks that if he puts on Ian's (or my) church shoes than he'll get to go. If only he could prefer church over going to bed when he is sixteen, that would be great!