There's nothing like home-canned fruit!

10 Quarts of Applesauce, stove splatters and all. That's it. 10 lousy (OK, yummy) quarts. And only 5, I repeat, 5 of them are mine!!!

My sister Molly and I decided this week to keep up on our pioneering and homemaking skills...a couple of times a year we get adventurous and can fruit. I started a few years ago, Molly just joined me. I remember my mom doing it but then she would not want to eat the canned peaches or pears or grape juice or pickles or whatever because 1)they looked so pretty on the shelf and 2)she knew how dang long it took to get them there! We both belong to a Produce Co-op (www.bountifulbaskets.org) and besides their standard weekly produce baskets, we can occasionally buy bulk cases of fruit. This time we bought 1 case of Granny Smith apples to split. (Having never done them before, we didn't want to be overwhelmed with too much fruit.) We decided on apple sauce - both our families like it and we can always use it for the babies that come along! So luckily, I have an "All in One" apple peeler, corer, slicer which makes quick work of, well, peeling, coring and slicing! Then we had to cook them to soften, blend them to the desired texture, heat with a bit of sugar to boiling, ladle it into hot quart jars and process in a hot water bath or steam canner for 20 minutes. Applesauce does not boil like water, it explodes like the geysers at Yellowstone. FYI. So what do we get for 3 hours of work? 10 quarts of applesauce. We figure they cost us about $2 a quart for the jar and apples. What did it cost us in time? Well, luckily, we didn't have a lot else going on Saturday afternoon.

There are some things we have learned along the way with canning. This is not an exhaustive list as we only just dabble in it here and there.
1. It is a very important skill to have and maybe some day we will have gardens or yards or orchards that yield lots of fruits and vegetables and we can "put them up" ourselves!
2. There is nothing like home-canned peaches. Nothing, not even those expensive Del Monte brand ones in the refrigerated produce section at the grocery store come close. It is worth every moment blanching and peeling and slicing and processing and mopping up sticky floors.
3. Pears, well, commercially canned pears taste about the same as home canned ones. So, given that, and that they are harder to do than peaches, I will stick to buying them commercially unless I get them for free or next to nothing!
4. I will forever appreciate commercially prepared applesauce after seeing that one full case of apples only yields 10 quarts of applesauce.