Apple Pickin' Fun!

We've just returned from a visit with my parents, who live just outside of the Okanagan or, as I call it, the Land O' Plenty. In their back yard are two apple trees, a sour cherry tree, a peach tree, a pear tree and a decorative cherry tree. While we were there, apples were falling off the branches at a rate of about one per minute, which made me more than a little anxious because Kaitlyn spent most of her time playing in the shade of the apple trees. More than once an apple narrowly missed her as she swung under the branches! On the bright side, she got a lot of practice sinking her two little teeth into a number of Kaitlyn-sized apples!

Finally, my dad and I made an attempt to avert disaster by picking the apples that looked best and biggest. We ended up with two huge barrels and it didn't even look like we had made a dent! So what to do with all those apples? Make applesauce for the baby of course! We peeled and sliced 15 pounds of apples, boiled them up with a little lemon and cinnamon (no sugar for this little one!) and fed the whole mess through a food processor.

Fifteen pounds of apples ready to go!

Boiling up the apples with the canning tub standing ready.

The finished product, my first batch of applesauce!

We ended up with 16 small and 3 large jars of applesauce. I'm still amazed that my parents simply know how to do all of this canning. What would have been a weekend job for me was just a few hours at their house. And more than that, they are always sharing their home-canned goods with us. No visit ends without a suitcase overloaded with applesauce, pesto, peaches, green beans, beets and moose meat. It doesn't get much better than that!

Now Kaitlyn has homemade applesauce from apples picked by her mom and grandpa and I learned a little bit more about canning, although I don't think I'll be trying it at home any time soon. I'll also be using the applesauce in this recipe for her birthday cake. It's simple, tasty and has no refined sugar, my kind of baby-friendly recipe!

Now that we're home we are getting ready to move into our house, throw a birthday party, bring in our own garden and finally, start work again. Updates to follow.