It's that time of year again

When the apple trees are dropping apples and you have to grab the good ones while you can. If you want to can apple pie filling, that is. This is because only evenly shaped apple fit in the peeler/corer device and I really don't want to peel dozens of apples by hand. So this morning H. picked, G. spun the apples through the peeler/corer, and I took off any last bits of peel and blanched them. We'd done twelve cups of peeled, sliced, and blanched apples by noon. 

Then I spent about four hours in the after turning them into pie filling and canning it all. I ended up with 13 pints of caramel apple pie filling to store.


Well, there are 13 pints sitting there. I actually ended up with 9 pints to store because four jars didn't seal. The masses are thrilled because this means I need to make pie this week to use them up. I am not thrilled because I really wanted them all for later and making pies was not on the week's to-do list. It really seems as though the failure rate for Ball canning lids has increased over the years. It used to be I would have one, maybe two jars not seal in a batch this size. Four seems excessive, especially when I do everything exactly the same for each jar. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making bias tape... otherwise known as the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
( Sorry, the contest is now closed .... though you're welcome to leave a comment if you like.) [This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but is here solely to give Blogger a different photo to post in the thumbnail.] It's Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway time again.  I love bias tape.  It is so useful and so easy to use... finishing edges ... finishing seams ...  And while the pre-packaged stuff has it's place and I use it often, I really like to have patterned bias tape as well.  Enter one of my favorite little tools: the bias tape maker.  This one make 3/4 inch bias tape and I will be giving one away at the end of this post.  But first, I thought some of you might like to see what it does if you've never used one before. I don't have a rotary cutter, nice cutting mats, or even a proper cutting table (I cut-out things on my floor), so if I can do this, so can you.  Here is my admittedly quirky method. Step 1:  Lay out the fabric an...
Read more

Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
Sew, Mama, Sew! is hosting another giveaway day , the day where many bloggers giveaway things they have made or supplies to make things or both.  It is great fun to visit a lot of blogs and try to win cool stuff.  So fun that I thought I would participate this year. I had great hopes of making a set of coordinating mother/daughter aprons.  But reality reared its ugly head and I came to terms with the fact that my time is not limitless.Instead of aprons,  I must continue to spend quality time with yards and yards of red plaid flannel.  What am I making?  Well, as I tell my children, it is the season not to ask questions... I will be able to let you know sometime after the 25th. Instead of making something, I went to my favorite thrift store and found some supplies in the form of sheets and pillowcases (some of my favorite raw material).  I'm giving away three pillowcases and one twin flat sheet. I decided to go with bright, springy colors...
Read more

The mystery of the missing soap

You all know that I am an avid reader of mysteries, but sometimes we have our own real life mysteries here as well. Take the case of the missing soap. One of our bathrooms upstairs is the children's bathrooms, whose sink is lower than other sinks upstairs. Now, since it is the children's bathroom, it is not always pristine and things cannot always be found when they are needed. Are we the only house where things just randomly vanish, never to be seen again? This happens fairly frequently. Often the items are too big to have been taken by Borrowers , but every human in the house disavows any knowledge of the missing item. As far as they are concerned, they never even knew said item existed, so how could they have taken it? Often Mr. Nobody gets the blame and we move one, the item sometimes resurfacing at a later date and sometimes not. Early last week, when the little girls went upstairs to get ready for bed and found an entire bar of soap missing, it was classed as one of ...
Read more