APPLE BUTTER TIME!

Tags

Apple Butter, Canning, Food, Fruit Butters, homemade, Roaster Oven

You know Autumn is here when the apples start coming in, and there are so many dishes to make from apples it boggles the mind!

Have you ever wished for good homemade apple butter, without the 40 gallon copper kettle, and the hours of stirring? Well I can tell you I love apple butter, and I don’t have a copper kettle! However, I do have an 18 quart Roaster Oven, like the ones that are on sale this time of year that will roast a 22 pound turkey!  These ovens can be set anywhere and free up oven space for other cooking/baking needs.

If you are a home canner, they are invaluable for making soups/stews, fruit butters, and other dishes to can. They also are great for baking pies, cakes and even baking up to 3 loaves of bread at a time, they are also great for baking hams, roast and chickens in.

Well I have gotten off track here,  the topic is Apple Butter, you can buy number 10 can’s of applesauce and add fresh apple cider to it in the roaster oven if you are not up to making your own apple sauce. However I do make my own apple sauce, I have a 25 quart Stainless Steel stock pot, that will hold 1 bushel of quartered apples, no need to peel and core the apples just cut up and place in the pot with several cups of water and over medium heat simmer the apples stirring  now and then to get them started. Once cooked, you place in small batches into a Foley Food Mill and puree the apples into sauce.

I then pour the apple sauce into the roaster oven, it is full, so you will have to let it reduce a bit to add cider (which will reduce and acts as part of the sugar) add the spices, reduce more, and taste, if too tart then add some white sugar, brown sugar, and continue to reduce. This sounds like a lot of work, but not really as with the roaster oven you don’t have to stir, however I do from time to time just to see how it is coming along and taste.

It will take about 24 hours to reduce to the consistency of apple butter, I start mine out at about 300 degrees, this gets it going good, then when I got to bed at night I reduce to about 200 degrees,

From one bushel of apples, made into applesauce I got 20 pints of apple butter.

Remember the following recipe is variable according to personal tastes, the recipe is given as a guide, some like more spices, some less, same goes for sugars, also this recipe can easily be reduced in volume to make a smaller amount in your crock pot, the same principals apply, just do no set the lid to cover the pot, it needs to be ajar to allow steam to escape and evaporation to occur.

For those of you wishing to make smaller amounts of apples butter or crock pot apple butter, my friend Karyn Bennett at Lizzy Lane Farm, has two good recipes one of which is sugar free.

Please visit her blog for these wonderful recipes.

Lizzy Lane Farm Crockpot Apple Butter

HOMEMADE BROWN SUGAR

APPLE BUTTER

1 Bushel Apples

Quarter, or eighth apples and place in stock pot, add several cups of water and allow to simmer stirring once in a while during cooking to bring cooked apples up and raw apples to the bottom, check often to see if you need to add more water, (some apples are dryer than others)

Once the apples are cooked, run through a food mill to extract seeds and peels.

Transfer to your roaster oven, turn heat to approx 300 degrees, if your roaster oven is really full then wait to add the sugars, spices, vinegar, or cider, this may be as much as 8 hours, then add

3+ Cups Brown Sugar

3+ Cups White Sugar

1+ Tablespoons Cinnamon

1/2+ Tablespoon Cloves

1/2 +Tablespoon Allspice

1 Teaspoon Salt (optional- seldom do I add salt)

2-3 Cups Apple Cider Vinegar

Stir in thoroughly and and leave the lid ajar (now I find with the roaster oven that it does not spatter like some have said happens in a crockpot) you have much better control of the heat on a roaster oven should it start to spatter just reduce the heat.

Also with the roaster oven you seldom have to stir, (I do because I have to taste and stir and if you think that it needs more sugar, you can add at anytime so it is better start out with less and add later. The same goes for spices.

TO CAN APPLE BUTTER

Sterilize your jars (I wash in the dish washer) fill jars and put lids on according to manufactures directions. Process in Boiling Water Bath for 15 minutes or according to elevation for your area.

TORN- ONE BLOG OR SEVERAL?

Tags

baking, Basketry, blog(s), Caning, Canning, chair caning, cooking, cooking from scratch, lifestyles, Mennonite-Amish, recipes

Good Morning Everyone- I have been torn the last couple of weeks pondering my blog!

As all of you know it started out with Basketry and Chair Caning which I still do, then I added recipes that I  make, as I cook nearly everything from scratch everyday. Many recipes are Mennonite and Amish recipes.

The one thing I never wanted for my original blog was to become a mish-mash of ideas and topics. While many of you have commented and written to me privately telling you like the blog the way it is, because it introduces you to a wide variety of topics, some have written wanting to see a Cooking Blog, with recipes, pictures and posts about cooking, baking and canning, and Mennonite Life.

If I did create a blog, based solely on these things I would link it to the original Blog, like the blog I have for the Baskets for sale (which as you know has not happened yet) life seems to get in the way sometimes.

So I am asking my followers, readers out there to either write to the following ways and let me know what you think.

email mcw1961@gmail.com

or

Comment on the Blog for this post

If you know others that like to read cooking blogs you can pass this along to them and they are free to comment also. I want to thank everyone for their help in this decision!

Since for me cooking from scratch is a daily thing, a cooking blog alone is not impossible, but I would just like to see everyone’s feeling about this.

Home Canning in Today’s World

Tags

Canning, Canning2, Groups, Harvest, Home Canning, Preserving

Home Canning in today’s world, while many people are content to just shop at their neighborhood grocery store an have what they need. There is still a vast number of people that like to home can their foods.
I for one feel that home canning is not a chore like a lot of people think that it is, but it is for us and always has been a way of life.
Having come from a Mennonite background, where preserving the harvest is as natural as making that first pot of coffee in the morning. Canning has advantages over freezing everything in that one when the power goes out you do not loose everything, you still can eat what you have put up.
Basically you have ready made meals in a jar, or else very little prep time goes into helping to make the evenings meal
This is just a quick post, there will be a more comprehensive post in the coming month.
I would like to let you know about an invaluable resource on the internet, it is a Yahoo Group that I belong to that is filled with very knowledgeable people who have been canning for years. Everyone on the group is very easy to talk to, ask questions I am sure in no time you will have and answer if not several to your questions.
The group is called Canning 2, here is the link to the group. I cannot urge you enough to join and ask questions from the many tried and true experts on this group that can guide you through the home canning experience, you will also find answers to home cheese making and dehydrating there as well.
Here is the link to the group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canning2/

 

Spiced Seckel Pears

Pork Loin

Canning Days

Tags

Allspice, Canning, ceyenne, Cinnamon, Cloves, Pork, Savory, Seckel Pears, Spiced, tomatoes, Vegetables

Days start early during canning season, as you need to can, but also must get the chairs done in the studio also. So days begin when the alarm goes off at 4 am., this week I had a nice visit with a wonderful friend at Pharsalia Plantation in Tyro, Virginia. She wanted to learn to use a pressure canner. I don’t think she has a fear of one now.

While there we canned a couple loads of tomatoes, when I went to leave she insisted that I take several jars home with me. The are a couple of the jars. We canned in quarts and half gallons. Please take a look at Pharsalia Plantation, nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Pharsalia is a plantation home surrounded by orchards and vineyards, and exsquit flower gardens. It was a real pleasure to be there canning this week with Florence Morgan “Foxie”.

That day I also came home with a box of Seckel Pears, for those of you unfamilliar with this old variety of pear they are golf ball sized or a little larger in size, the are canned unpeeled and usually either pickled of spiced. I spiced and canned my pears, as in the pictures below.

These pears are spiced in a medium to heavy syrup, with whole allspice berries, whole cloves and stick cinnamon.

It was a day to stock up for the winter with the making of pork vegetable soup, all made from items in the freezer. This soup has a savory flavor and is perfect on a cold winters day.

This soup consists of slow roasted pork Boston Butt, along with potatoes, corn, peas, lima beans, plenty of onions, celery, ceyenne, garlic, with some pinot noir wine.