Apple Butter, Thrifting Scores

Apple Butter-
It is horribly smoky today! With fires in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, California and Montana it is just AWFUL! Praying for some storms to come thru the NW and start calming these down. I'm staying in as much as possible because the air is so bad...

As a teenager one of my all time favorite things on WW toast was apple butter, peanut butter and sliced bananas. Now I leave out the bananas! A few years ago I made apple butter and the flavor was really nice. I decided to make some again. After the last 2 days canning marathon I was sore and tired. Dave went to work today and I slept in. I ran some errands, got a haircut and came home. I had one box of apples reserved for apple butter and a cobbler. After I came home I started cutting and prepping. I ran thru the food processor again. I forgot to leave out my fine strainer, so I just ran it as chunky. After it cooked a bit I used my immersion blender and that really smoothed it out. Its not quite as fine as I'd like but the flavor is really yummy. I used a standard Ball Blue Book recipe, but used 1/2 the white sugar with 1/2 brown sugar, and spices. Nice and brown, cooked down, and used the inversion method. It's never failed me so far. The total was 10 and 1/2 eight oz. jelly jars. I could have made more, but I decided that was enough. Maybe more tomorrow? I will make a cobbler for sure, with walnuts and raisins, from the box with the last of the apples-

Thrifting Scores-
I hit Goodwill on the way home today, and spotted the bird above! I love birds!!! It's perfect for winter decor, kind of French counrty and it's big! It's about 7" high with a nice antique finish-

$4.00

I recently chipped my cheap, thin Ikea white platter in a few places. I kept my eye open and found this heavy, white platter-

It's 14" across by Pampered Chef, nice and heavy! I'm sure it was expensive new, and looks like it's never been used, no marks.  Perfect to replace my old one for group meals. Love it! I also had a 20% off coupon, so score! I found a like-new pair of Haflinger leather clogs on eBay (matchs my black ones) for $30.00 (way over $100.00 new), durable and comfy for work, soles show no wear-

Love the velcro adjustment

September Is National Preparedness Month, Apple Harvest- Canning Time!

September Is National Preparedness Month-
After the recent disaster in Houston it's good to review what you may want to have on hand before an emergency hits. Here's some ideas from the Redcross.org Prepare for Emergencies , but there's lots more online. I think a good strategy (sometimes) is knowing when to leave the area if you can. And buddy up with your neighbors. Here's a sample of a few things I've been doing recently-

Bought some chicken quarters on sale (cheap BBQ prices) to repackage and freeze, ditto bacon in a bulk package, have been freezing fresh fruits, and bought bulk rolled oats to store in big jars-

Found some great wool socks for winter at Costco, since mine are so worn out, $10.00 for four pairs-

Lots of canning, see below post. Am stocking up on more 1 gallon water jugs, batteries, will buy a few more rechargeable ones for our outdoor solar lights, checking our ice melt and snow shovel from last year. More bad snow is in the long term forecast. I hope they are wrong as last year was Snowmageddon!

Poor Dave shoveling, again

But very pretty!

Apple Harvest- Canning Time!

I'm thrilled and tired, but we're having a great Pippin apple harvest this year! After a major pruning a few years back we didn't have many apples. Sunday the tree was full and then some. I took tTues./Wed. as vacation days giving me a time buffer. I just hoped the tree would cooperate :) I just wanted to do the bulk of it with Dave home to help. Pippins are a great variety, crisp and good for baking or just eating raw. We pulled out the perfect ones and they went in the fridge in the crisper. They keep well for a few months. Lots on the tree in our front yard-

Tree bent heavy with fruit

Dave picked the entire tree, brought them in the house/on the deck, we started washing, cleaning  and putting them in containers-

Usually I do the processing by myself, but with my back standing for long periods really gets to me. It also went much faster with the two of us. I sat at the dining table cleaning and cutting, while Dave worked at the sink-

Since we don't spray our trees, they're wormy, so we cut the bad spots out. We may try spraying with an organic spray next spring. With the canning food processor it removes the peel and seeds. You basically just 1/4 and cut off the bad spots, cook, and throw in the processor. Works great! The hens loved the leftover pulp, oh my!

After I got the 1st big pot full of apples cooking Dave went out to harvest the rest. I decided to make applesauce first since it's more labor intensive and messy. I use the largest screen blade on my Roma Strainer Deluxe Sauce Maker since I like mine chunky. The first batch of apples (5 gallon pot?) yielded a about 10 Qts., and I didn't need to add any sugar they were so sweet. I did 6 more after that including 4 spiced, like apple pie filling.

1st batch

2nd batch

Looking good!

More room to go!

Dave told me after weighing some that we were looking at several hundred pounds, maybe 300!

I did canned apple slices today. Apples slices, so much FASTER than sauce. Just slice, toss in Fruit Fresh, make a light syrup, then process. Some of them floated even though I thought I jammed them in. Oh well. I had to stop mid-afternoon and evaluate if we would need more sugar or lids.  We had a LOT of apples! It was hard to judge given the bug spot factor. Luckily a grocery store with a good supply of canning supplies is 5 minutes from our house. I sent Dave down to get more sugar and lids. I set aside a small box of apples to apple butter Tuesday. We had just enough 1 Qt. jars! We both agreed to give away about the last 30 Lbs. of the apples on Craigslist. We know there are people that could use them for themselves if needed, or as feed. We felt good giving them away, since someone picked them up within 30 minutes of posting. We both didn't want to work til midnight, and Dave starts his new job tomorrow. We have plenty for the 2 of us, share the wealth I say. Our total was 62 Qt.s of apples products this weekend-

Last batch cooling

Dave and our haul!

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

I was Featured!

Lessons Learned From A Layoff Part 2, Free High Chair, Fermented Curtido Success

Lessons Learned From Layoff Part 2-

Fall is really in the air! Even with the warmer weather this week, 95 degrees today, the days are shorter. I'll be canning apples this long weekend, with more freezing and other food stashing. I had a volunteer in the garden this summer. I thought it was some kind of edible squash, but it's a ornamental pumpkin! Last year I bought a few locally, then they were composted. We tossed some compost in the garden, now we have free pumpkins! Fall is on the way :) I'm leaving on the vine until it cools a bit since they rot in the heat. I looked up the variety 

Cute

Dave got a check yesterday he didn't expect from his last job. I had had a terrible day at work, so we went out for dinner! We dad a great, relaxing chat about how the layoff went. I mentioned being happy about only having to tap a little savings. Dave said we actually never did that. While he pays the actual bills, I'm in on everything. We have a "savings" account, but we also have a "slush fund" built into our checking. It's a little random money that we let accumulate and don't have listed in our register. When Dave told me a while back he had to transfer a little $$$ I thought he meant from savings. It was actually from the slush fund. So, right now, having been unemployed for 7 weeks, we basically lost no money. Dave said we actually SAVED $1,000. Receiving various funds, cutting expenses, shopping less, and using some of our food stores did make a BIG difference! It wasn't as bad as I thought. Sometimes you just never know how it went til it's actually over.

Free High Chair-

We baby sit one grandchild every other Saturday and had a little booster seat for the dining table, but no tray. A few nights ago I was thinking I should check Craigslist, then I went to the free section and found this highchair! Dave's last day off work was Friday (new job starts Tuesday), so I emailed the person and he made arrangements for the pickup Friday. After basically wasting about 2 hours, since the owner kept getting "delayed", he finally picked it up. It's safe, Dave deep cleaned, but was missing the pad. It has 3 trays, can be put in a recline (for infants) position, has wheels, and folds up slim. New they're about $125.00 on up. I was going to try and make a pad, but realized it would be time intensive, with other looming projects. I looked on Etsy, but too much $$$, looked on eBay and found pad this for $14.00-

I'll modify it since there's a little riser post in the leg area, but it was a great deal! We used it today (without the pad) for Grand baby River, and it worked great! Much less mess and easy to clean and store away. When we're done using it we can sell and get our $$$ back. SCORE!!! 

Fermented Curtido Success-

I recently posted about the messy start of my Curtido making- 

and then fermenting for 2 weeks

Now it's done! We had a dinner of chicken flautas and the curtido. It spicy, full of flavor, crunchy and full of yummy probiotics! The whole batch in the fermenting jar worked out to be 3 1-Qt. canning jars. They're now resting in the fridge, minus what we had for dinner.

It's amazing what you can do with a little salt and veggies! My fermenting jar is now ready for another batch of something, still thinking. I seemd to keep missing the pickling cukes, but will check again...