Apple season

First, I'll start with a quote from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  This book is about building a food culture by eating seasonally and locally and challenging the notion that eating seasonally results in deprivation.  One phrase from the book has been stuck in my mind today.

"...asparagus seems like a good place to start.  And if the object of our 

delayed gratification is a suspected aphrodisiac?  That's the sublime 

paradox of a food culture: restraint equals indulgence."

Well, swap apples for asparagus and you get a glimpse of our last few days.  Yesterday we went to the apple orchard and had apple cider, apple pie with cheddar cheese, cider donuts, and later I made pork chops with applesauce.  Today we had apple pancakes for breakfast, I canned 14 jars of applesauce and now I'm enjoying some Irish cheddar cheese over apple slices.  Yum. 

I thought I'd share a few peeks of the process of making applesauce for canning:

 (I'm sorry that there aren't photos of the canning.  There is just too much scalding water 

and steam for me to remember to grab the camera.)

Now I'm relaxing on the couch and reveling in the pop, pop, pop of the jars sealing.
That's the sound of pure bliss after a day of canning.

Later tonight I'll return to my sewing machine. 
Next time, you'll see the picture below turned into a quilt block!