Friday, October 20, 2006
I Got a New Toy
This is a great devise that peels and cores apples all at the same time. Is it messy? A definite YES! But, it sure saves a lot of time. The alternative is a vegetable peeler and a paring knife. I cut up and cored enough apples to can four quarts and five pints of apple sauce; plus 12 ½ - 12 ounce jars of apple butter. We ate the half jar.
The apple sauce is not as sweet as I would like it to be but it will be good with a few Red Hot Candies added to it (my mom’s favorite) or on ice cream. It was easy enough to make too once the apples were peeled and cored.
I didn’t need to peel applies to make the apple butter so I cored them by hand. The recipe called for cooking the apples for 10 hours in the oven; stirring and adding more apple mixture as it cooked. I placed the bowls of apple butter in the oven at 3:00 PM the first day. You do the math.
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon your point of view) the apple butter did not cook in 10 hours. At 3:00 PM the next day I finally began to can the apple butter.
For 24 hours I felt like a mom with a new born; checking the apple butter; stirring the apple butter; adding more apple butter; raising the temperature on the oven; lowering the temperature on the oven; making sure the jars, lids and rings stayed clean. I was ready to swear off making apple butter. After all what’s wrong with the apple butter they sell at Safeway? Then we tasted the apple butter.
We’re going to the open air market again on Saturday to buy another box of apples.
