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:

quartered


cored


cooked


saucing it up

 (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!

canning pot

6 comments:

Rebecca said...

Lovely!

I'm jealous. There are no apple orchards to be found around Houston.

Tania said...

Strike a light* woman! You weren't kidding! You've been up to the elbows. I can't begin to imagine how WONDERFUL your house must smell...

* Aussie for 'holy moly'

felicity said...

I loved that book - and I love apples. Yay successful canning!

Lily Boot said...

such a wonderful post Melinda! I too sit here in the kitchen listening and loving the popping sound - makes me feel so very competent!!! I can't wait to see the apple and canner quilt block - and we have the same canner - I got mine as part of Ball starting kit. We love it. Enjoy your apple sauce.

melissa said...

yay on you for being so awesomely productive in your own personal canning factory!

Anna said...

oh wow, that looks like so much fun (and a lot of work). yum yum!

Post a Comment

You are awesome! Thanks for leaving a comment :)