Apple Boss

Recently I tackled 60 gallons of apples (all hand picked from our apple tree at the farm) with my Aunt Jane.

I wanted to make a couple pies for my Dad.

Because I love him, and he loves apple pie.

Not to mention I was recovering from knee surgery and bored of laying on the couch.

Daytime TV has never been my thing.

Snoozefest.

So I called my Aunt Jane who lives a few miles up the dusty gravel road from my parents.

Because my Aunt Jane is a boss.

Like for real.

She gets stuff done.

And she also happens to be an awesome baker/pie-crust-maker-extraordinaire.

The first day we started with 30 gallons of apples at 10 am.
 

This is 10 gallon. So take this times six and that's how many apples we did total.

By lunchtime they were all peeled and cut and we were well on our way to making 30 pints of applesauce.



Some of the peeled apples. To keep the peeled apples from turning brown we put them in water with a little salt! Worked like a charm!

We used a potato peeler to get the skins off the apples. Then instead of cutting each apple with a knife we used one of those fancy apple cutters...you know the ones...

 

 

...it saved so much time!

 

I took a video of my Aunt making the applesauce and I can't get it to upload here. If you're my friend on instagram, you've already seen it. Shes an applesauce boss, fo sho.

 

We also made more than a couple pies...

 

 

These pies are made with my late Grandma's homemade pie crust recipe...which is made with lard. Yes, you read that right. I said lard. I'm convinced you haven't lived until you've had a pie made with lard. I realize it's gross to think about it, so just don't OK? Stop thinking and eat some of this pie. You won't be sorry.



This is the floor of the backseat of my Dad's truck. You should have seen his face when he asked "Are we taking all of these home?" And I replied, "Yep!" Priceless.

To say I was exhausted after this day would be an understatement and I came home with apple in places I should never have apple.

Ahem.

But we had just enough of a wild hair for round two less than a week later!

I'm super bummed because my phone camera broke in between round one and round two so I have no pictures to show you from round 2 of apples. Credit goes to google images for supplying the photos for round 2!

We started out with another 30 gallon of apples.

We decided we had made enough pie the first go around, and wanted to do some canning, for something different.

So, we made apple pie jelly, blackberry apple jam, apple pie filling and more applesauce.

Apple Pie Filling

Blackberry Apple Jam

Apple Pie Jelly

All of them turned out so delicious!

Not going to lie, I had a migraine the size of Texas when we were done with round 2. And I'm kind of glad the apple tree only has apples once a year, because it is A LOT of work to make sure they aren't wasted.

BUT all the work is worth it.

Because now, I'm an apple boss.