Applesauce

About a week before Ella was born I decided to can applesauce for the year, so Blake and I went to a local orchard and picked nearly 90 pounds of gravenstein apples. This is the second year we have done this, but last year we picked 40 pounds of apples and we ended up with only like 6-8 quarts of applesauce. So we picked double that this year. I have to say, picking fruit at the orchard has to be one of my favorite things about Oregon. You can go pick just about anything you want at the various orchards around here. This fall, Blake wants to go pick hazelnuts, which I have never even seen on a tree before, so that should be fun.
Anyway, here are some pictures of our "adventure." It took us two nights of cooking the apples, putting them through the strainer (HUGE time saver!) and processing them all. It was a lot of work, but I am so happy with how it turned out. Blake was such a trooper, he had to put up with a lot of my nesting projects that I wanted done before Ella was born. This was the biggest and most time consuming of them all. Thanks honey! But now we have 30 quarts of yummy applesauce to last us until next year...sorry Blake, this is going to be a yearly tradition.

Owen helped by "washing" the apples, although there was a lot more throwing of the apples going on.

This is only half of the apples we processed.

This is where I sat all night long and cranked out the sauce.
Blake stirring in the sugar and cinnamon.
That's one huge pot of applesauce.