Applesauce!

Well, be careful what you pray for!

I was thinking the other day that I'd like to can some applesauce cause I hate having to buy it at the store and know I can make some good stuff at home. So I kinda slipped it in my prayers one night. Well as I was stopping by someone's house to return something (which for some reason I felt I HAD to do THAT day) I saw right across the street a small trailer loaded with apples that had a sign on it that said, "FREE APPLES - good for applesauce." Well I felt a jab in my spiritual heart and knew it was time to take action, because God had just answered by prayers with an opportunity. So I took action. We opened up our trunk and loaded the apples right into it. We ended up with probably 75 lbs of apples. Granted they were very much on the homegrown without pesticides wagon, so they didn't look so pretty, but MAN, organic with out the price! I was stoked to say the least! So for the next two days we canned applesauce.

Forty eight quarts of applesauce.... holy cow... Like I said, be careful what you pray for.
This all happened over Conference weekend so during and in between the saturday sessions we were cutting, cooking and the lot. Because Dan's brother Brian and his wife Tiffany as well as Eric my brother were here visiting (to share conference with us) I was able to recruit help in the whole process. HUGE thanks go out to Dan, Brian, Tiff and Eric for their cutting, cooking, straining, filling, capping help and of course the constant childcare we kept trading off on. The great thing about it all, is that it was FUN! Things don't seem like such work when you have someone to help with it, and sharing interesting conversation makes the time fly! World economics and Conference gave us a lot to talk about. Well this last weekend guess what we ended up doing again? Yup applesauce. This time we made half of it into chunky spiced applesauce. So, how long do you have to wait before you break it open and eat it... with out feeling like you just wasted all that preserving effort? I've been struggling with this one!