Fruitfull Harvest

Look what I learned to do! This year I finally learned to can. I am so lucky that I have pear trees and my mom has a few apple trees that are always packed full of apples. I borrowed my mom's water canner and jars (since she had a ton of them) and her very helpful canning book and I went to town. I first tried the applesauce (by myself). It took quite a while to peel, cut and core all the apples myself, cook them, mash them and then process them. I had to use my stove so it took like an hour to heat the water canner. I ended up with 10 Quarts of applesauce. I don't think that is too bad for my first time. Yesterday Ryan and I did the pears together. He would peel them and I would cut and core them. We borrowed my mom's outdoor cooker, so it made processing the jars much faster. It took us 3 hours to do 22 Quarts. Next year I will be all prepared. I plan on getting this nifty little machine that takes the whole apple (or tomato) and mashes it while discarding the peel and seeds. That way I can do applesauce and tomato sauce in no time. I can't wait.

Yes, my pears look a little discolored because I was too lazy to go buy asorbic acid and I was all out of lemon juice. Oh well, it won't affect how they taste.

Tonight I am going over and picking up some more jars from my mom's and I am going to try to can carrots in the pressure canner. We'll see what happens.