Applesauce Making from Neil's Garden

A group of us friends got together at Sarah & Neil's house. Sarah, the acting director of our annual "Friday Night Applefest" provided pans, stove, and Neil's excellent help in harvesting and washing the apples in advance. They have several well-cared for apple trees and share their bounty each season. We, Josh and I, provided the applesauce squashing mill, brought along Lauren, our last WWOOFer of the season who had never seen applesauce made before. She gladly cut up apples and assisted everywhere.

Roxanna brought Tom, who watched (as he says, someone has to), and also brought recycled jars to fill when the sauce was done. Mardi & Lynn came, we all cooked, stirred, chatted and had a potluck dinner while the applesauce cooked.

Scattered around the living room were the watchers, who got accused of doing noting but sit. Of course, once the apples are cut up and cooked, there's actually not much to do but stir, put in some cinnamon and then run everything through the mill to get the peelings and seed out.

Once the apples were cooked, and run through the applesauce-squashing mill, it was time to put the sauce in to jars, bottles, freezer boxes and plastic bags. Roxanna helped with the filling and lidding of everything.




And once all that was done, Roxanna proclaimed it DONE!

We had a great evening of visiting, discussing, saucing and mashing apples and everyone took home a bunch of applesauce from Neil & Sarah's excellent apples.