Weekend of Preserving

Seth and I spent almost the entire weekend canning! We have an apple tree in our backyard that has been dropping apples for the last several weeks. I admit, we've been lazy about picking them up off the ground (or at least I have), but on Thursday Seth picked them up and bagged up the ones that were suitable for cooking with. We ended up with a big paper grocery bag full of apples. 

Saturday, we cut up apples and threw some in the dehydrator and made applesauce out of the rest. Okay, I peeled the apples with our Apple Peeler Corer Slicer, and Seth sliced them. The apples are too soft for the Apple Peeler Corer Slicer to actually do the slicing, so we just used it to peel the apples. I definitely had the easy job!

We made 3 batches of applesauce and ended up with 6 quarts. I looked at a bunch of recipes ended up just kind of winging it. Basically, we used apples, a little bit of water and cinnamon. It was plenty sweet without any added sugar (at least Seth thought so). 

There were tons of left over apple peels:

Seth wanted to do something with them, so I put a bunch of them on a baking sheet, sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on them, and baked them in the oven. 

On Sunday we picked blackberries from the side of one of the trails nearby. Unfortunately, the blackberry bushes are full of thorns and it was difficult to reach many of the ripe berries. We still have tons of strawberries in the freezer from earlier in the summer, so we combined the berries to make Strawberry-Blackberry Jam, and then used the remaining blackberries from Blackberry Preserves. 

Check out all that canned goodness:

Poor little half jar of Blackberry Preserves!

We were on a roll with the cooking this weekend. Last night we made a whole roast chicken with green beans, radishes, carrots and onions. There were also mashed potatoes. Everything except the carrots and onion was from the Corvallis Farmer's Market. The chicken was from Afton Field Farm in Corvallis. All of their animals are pasture raised and grass fed. We've bought quite a few things from them this summer, and it has all been delicious. 

On the knitting front, I'm hoping to finish my Mom's Tea Leaves cardigan by Tuesday. It's going to be rainy today and possibly tomorrow, so I'm planning on watching movies and knitting until it's done. Then, the goal is to finish the sweater for Seth's Dad by sometime mid-October. 

Hope your last few days/weeks at camp are going well!

Love,

liz