Homemade applesauce for canning

 

This year I decided to preserve some applesauce.

There is a local farm where you can pick your own apples at $.40/lb, which compared to the $1.49/lb at the grocery store, it was a bargain and worth a try.

 

At the recommendation of the farm owner, I went with the empire apple (vs. his other options of Jonathon, golden delicious or red delicious.)

This was our load of apples (15 pounds worth)

 

I had my little helpers putting the apples in the bags after I picked them and it was quite the surprise to find out that one of my helpers was taste testing each apple to make sure it tasted good! 

 

I found a recipe for applesauce in my pressure cooker manual, it was pretty easy and the sauce turned out smooth, nicely colored, and sweet without adding any sugar. 

 

If you don't have a recipe, this is the one I used and a few tips (*) I learned along the way:

 

Applesauce

Wash, peel (I used a potato peeler), core and slice apples. I cut into quarters using a corer/slicer, but if you don't have on I don't think is matters to much how you cut them. 

I put the apple slices into ascorbic acid solution (*gallon of water with 1 Tbsp 'Fruit Fresh') to prevent browning until I got them all cut up.

Drain well.

Place slices in pan (*I would use a stock pot or something with high sides, mostly for the re-boil part because it 'spits' once it is all blended up) with 1/2 cup water

(*I had 42 medium sized apples and still only used the 1/2 C, so my thoughts are that it is to keep the apples from burning until they soften up and start releasing their own liquid.)

Cook until tender (*the apples change color, they seem more transparent if that makes sense, and they start to break up pretty easy).

The recipe says to press through a sieve or food mill, but I just put them in a blender.

Sweeten to taste (I didn't add any sugar)

Reheat sauce to boiling.

Pack into clean, hot Mason jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.

Adjust jar lids. (I like to wipe the rim just to ensure a proper seal)

 

Process:

Pressure canner: Process at 5 pounds pressure, pints 8 minutes and quarts 10 minutes

Boiling water canning: Process pints 15 minutes (now I did quarts and it was not in the recipe so I just did 20 minutes because that is what they recommended for apples)

 

My 42 medium apples yielded 3 quarts.

 

 

 

Treadmill workout using Incline

Since my treadmill has not been working at it's best, my workouts have slacked some.
My husband tinkered with it and we thought had it fixed but come to find out, not quite.
It seems to work fine at the slower speeds so today I just had to give it a try (since we are signed up for a 5K run next Saturday and I have to at least try to be "ready" for it.)
Knowing that as you increase incline on a treadmill that you actually change the equivalent pace for non treadmill running, I came up with a workout that seemed to not stress the treadmill out but work me out!

Minutes	Incline	Speed
0-5	0-2	7.0
5 to 6	12	4.0
6 to 7	11	4.3
7 to 8	10	4.5
8 to 9	9	4.8
9 to 10	8	5.0
10 to 11	7	5.3
11 to 12	6	5.5
12 to 13	5	5.8
13 to 14	4	6.0
14 to 15	3	6.3
15 to 16	2	6.5
16 to 17	1	6.8
17 to 18	2	6.5
18 to 19	3	6.3
19 to 20	4	6.0
20 to 21	5	5.8
21 to 22	6	5.5
22 to 23	7	5.3
23 to 24	8	5.0
24 to 25	9	4.8
25 to 26	10	4.5
26 to 27	11	4.3
27 to 28	12	4.0
28 to 30	0-2	6.5

You can of course adjust the speed to fit where your typical pace would be. And if your treadmill only goes to incline 10 then your workout will just be 4 minutes shorter or you can add those 4 minutes in to the middle of your run at the 1 incline.
If you were unaware or would like to know more about treadmill pace equivalents click here.

What kids will say

I should write down things that my 4 year old will say because there are some funny things.  Unfortunately I don't write them down and then I can't remember any but one.
He was sitting on the floor playing the other day and randomly asked
"Mom, when are you going to have your other 3 babies?"
My first response (after a chuckle inside) was "Are you ready to have more siblings to share your toys?"
His surprising answer was "yes."  Surprising because he was actually in trouble for not playing nice with his little brother.
The other interesting thing from his original question was the number 3.  I don't think we have ever said we were going to have 3 more kids.
Maybe he knows something I don't?  Either way it was kind of a funny and cute conversation.