The Craftiest Workshop

I missed posting last weekend and my website had been down for about ten days. I had to upgrade my account and wasn’t ready to commit to that last weekend. I decided to give myself a break and dealt with that yesterday. Everything is back up and running now.

We made our, what has become, “annual” trip to Sherwood Park to help my sister and her husband pick the apples off their tree last weekend. She had warned me that the apples may not be as good as last year because they had some hail earlier in the summer. I went there expecting damaged apples and maybe less of them. NOT SO!
We picked all the apples we could reach leaving only some in the highest branches and a few on the branch going far into the neighbour’s yard. Many of the apples had big chunks taken out of them by their resident squirrel. I had to laugh because the squirrel was running from their pine tree to under there shed with pinecones while we picked. I felt right at home.

We filled around 50 bags with 25-30 apples in each bag.

We laid out the rest of salvageable apples on two long deck chairs and an old vinyl tablecloth. The damaged and bitten apples went into a pile on the ground. We ended up putting those in their big green composter to be picked up the next garbage day. All in all about 2000 apples compared to last year’s 1300.

We managed to fit all 50 bags in the back of our Santa Cruz double stacking a few of the bags.

As you can imagine, my past week has been about 5-6 hours per day processing apples. I have got my daily schedule down pat and quite efficient. After watering the garden, I first fill the dehydrator with either applesauce for fruit leather or sliced apples. It takes the longest. Next I fill the slow cooker with diced apples and fruit to make applesauce and then juice. The first few days I froze diced apples on cookie sheets to bag but I quickly realized my freezer space was limited. Chris gave me a hand quartering apples for the steam juicer. Yesterday, I switched from using the stovetop for juicing to making apple pie filling to put into jars. I am five days into processing and I have about 41 jars canned with applesauce, juice or pie filling; most of them 1 liter jars.

I decided to take a break and sort the remaining apples. There is still about half of the bags to go. I now have apples that were bruised badly or going bad placed near the door to be cut up next. The rest sorted into apples that had a bit of hail damage, apples that were small and apples that were unblemished. The small apples will be used for the juicer as it harder to core a small one. After the bruised apples I will work on the hail damaged ones. The unblemished ones should last a few more weeks in the garage.

I wanted to share the link for the apple pie filling I made. It is so easy and tastes so good. One batch fills a 1 liter jar plus 1 250ml jar. I think the larger jar would be enough for one pie. I am excited because I think this would work for my other fruit to make pie filling and I could just alter or omit the spices. Great for pies, tarts, crisps or an ice cream topping. Chris and I had some for dessert yesterday topped with granola and whipped cream.

https://www.iheartnaptime.net/homemade-apple-pie-filling/#recipe

I only did two jars worth of dried apple slices last year and ate through them fairly quick. I am going to make a lot more this time. I have almost filled a large plastic container that we got peanut butter pretzels in from Costco. I placed it next to our 1L olive oil to show have big it is.

We got jars from my sister, my mom and have picked up jars at the free dump store. I had so many and honestly thought I would never use them all but I am actually running low on large jars now. I found out today that our local Home Hardware is selling jar lids and rings for the old fashioned Gem jars and I plan to pick some up this coming week. The company that makes them is called ForJars.

We will be giving some apples to the board game café to use for tarts or muffins or whatever they want. Everyone I have asked so far either doesn’t can or bake or have already got apples from someone else. It seems to have been a good apple year in Alberta.

The last thing I wanted to add is that I have started a canning/dehydrating journal. I am writing down the steps for each thing that I did with the apples so I won’t second guess my timings and ingredients for next year. All of the instructions in one place. I will add timings for other fruit that I juice or dehydrate in the future as well.

If anyone has any weird and wacky ways to use up apples, apple cider or applesauce, feel free to pass them on to me. I have so many more apples to get through.