Apple Canning Palooza

My sister in law & I have a new yearly Fall tradition and I have dubbed it Apple Canning Palooza.

We learned a lot from last year and this year went much more smoothly.  This year there were no epic recipe misreadings, no jar explosions, and we were done by 10pm. And we had a real dinner during the craziness.  It helped a lot that we stuck to just apple recipe because last year we made jam too.  

My nephew prepped probably 80% of the apples and he was a HUGE help!  We again used the wonderous new Victorio apple peeler which made this year's experience enjoyable instead of tortuous.

We made 4 batches of apple butter & 3.5 batches of applesauce.  I did the math and we used 66 pounds of apples! And that poundage is after peeling and coreing.  We used recipes from the Ball Canning Book.  We did the apple cider butter and the spiced variation of the applesauce.

Once apples were peeled, cored, & sliced they went into bowls to get measured.

Then apples got cooked down.

If it was apple butter we pureed it in the blender and cooked it down more till it thickened.

If it was applesauce we just mashed it after a long cook down.

These are apple butter jars ready to be lidded and then processed.

Jennie's island was the command center for every part of the process: slicing, blending, jar filling

When it came to applesauce we had to up the size of the cooking pot on the stove so we broke out my canner.  One is applesauce and one was the sterilizing and jar processing center.

Another command center shot:

Throughout the day there was much cuteness.  Human baby and dog baby were fast friends.  He is learning the joy of how easily babies share their food:

Basil was very cooperative and spent most of the day napping on the rug:

And finally here are the fruits of our labor:

84 jars. Eighty-four jars!!

We split the jars up and hopefully they'll last us the year!