Green Apples

Cooking apples for applesauce

The sieve ready and waiting for the cooked apples

Cut up apples waiting their turn to be cooked in the pot on the stove

Kaitlyn cranking out the applesauce

Ally taking her turn with the sieve.

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to rush things. Andrea and I each bought 2 boxes of Gravenstein apples and were anxious to get going on making applesauce. I thought the apples seemed too green, but Andrea is so busy all the time and it is hard to squeeze in large amounts of time to be able to accomplish large tasks such as the apples that we decided to go ahead. Well, we tried to get things rolling today. It didn't turn out to be such a good idea. First of all, Andrea had one thing after another coming up to keep her from getting here earlier this morning so I just went ahead and got everything ready for the applesauce. After waiting for a while and figuring she would be coming soon, I went ahead and started cutting up apples and got the first batch cooked, put through the sieve and in the jars before she got here. I had cut all the apples in the first box. It didn't take me long to realize once I tasted the sauce that the apples were not ready for applesauce...they needed to ripen more. At first Andrea thought it tasted just fine....then I told her I had to add more sugar than usual. When the second batch was done cooking and went through the sieve, Andrea tasted the sauce without the added sugar and agreed that it just didn't taste right so we added more sugar. As enthusiastic as we are to get our canning done, we both came to the conclusion that the rest of the apples can wait until later next week. there is no point in making applesauce loaded with sugar when if we wait, the flavor will be better and less sugar will be needed. It was fun while it lasted! 1 box down...three more to go....then I will buy more boxes. Who knows how much we will end up with ...we go through a lot! :-)