Home Food Preservation, Part 2

So, I love applesauce.  Not the kind you get out of the TreeTop container (that's baby food), but the kind you'd want with pork chops or ribs.  You know, chunky, with cinnamon and nutmeg.  Um, yum! 

I hinted in my last post about sharing a recipe with you for my homemade applesauce.  This recipe can be hot water bath canned, or you can eat it fresh off the stove top.  My favorite way to do this is to make a double recipe (I'll give you the single recipe) and can it, and just save some for dinner that night, because once you've smelled it, you can't possibly not have some.  Here's the recipe:
4 medium Red Delicious apples
4 medium Granny Smith apples
1 cup (8oz.) apple juice or cider
A few good shakes ground cinnamon
2-3 palmfuls Brown Sugar
2 shakes Ground Ginger
1-2 shakes ground Nutmeg

Peel and core apples and cut into bite sized chunks.  Combine everything in a large pot.  Cook over medium high heat until apples are soft enough to mash with a fork or potato masher. 

If you're going to can them, you may want to add a little extra juice, then fill jars and follow canning instructions for applesauce.  I use the instructions in my Ball Blue Book (which came with my water bath canner.)

If you're going to eat them fresh, allow the applesauce to simmer until the sauce thickens a bit, then serve hot.

*This recipe will make about 2-3 pints of applesauce.

I hope you love this recipe as much as I do.  It's easy and always a family pleaser in my house.  So, here's the deal.  I need to preserve enough applesauce for my family to last through the year.  For us, that's a minimum of 52 pints, but if I do 52 quarts, we can have applesauce with more than one meal each week.  Which means I need a ton of apples.

And, as a few of my friends know, I love to share.  I have a tendency to give away bottles of homemade applesauce on occasion, which means, I will need to hoard my applesauce or make more than enough for my family.  So, as soon as I can start canning in my kitchen in my new home, I'll be heading out to the farm stand to purchase boxes of apples, hopefully at a discounted price, because frankly, I like to know where my food comes from and I like to support local people and farms (okay, and mostly, because I'm cheap and it's cheaper to do this than go to the grocery store.)

If you're interested in canning, this is one of the easiest things to start with.  I started canning my own applesauce 2 years ago, while we were still living in Wyoming.  My mom bought me a complete canning kit thing from walmart.com and had it shipped to me so I could start preserving my own food.  Thanks mom, I love it!

If you live near me, I know that over at Bi-Mart they're having a big sale on all the supplies you'll need for preserving your own food and they're also having a sale at Wilco.  If you don't live around the Eugene/Springfield area, check your local farm and ranch supplier, or if you have to, check walmart.com or another large internet retailer.

Good Luck!