Apple Butter - Its What I'm Doing Today

My friend and her kiddos just left.  My kids are napping (well, one is at school the rest are napping) and so I am sitting down here to tell you about my apple butter.  I am making it today to can and we will keep some and we will give some away probably for Christmas gifts.

I will say that the house smells so good.  I love the smell of apple butter when it is cooking.  When I make apple butter I start by making applesauce.

Yes, I know you can buy applesauce but I think you know me better than that.  Last year I found all of my apples for free.  We went foraging - I mean we did ask people and they let us pick apples off of their trees.  I have done that the last few years, but this year I just went to the orchard and picked out the "seconds" from the big bins.  It was ever so much easier and at $17 a bushel it was a pretty good price.

You may have seen this before but when you buy about 50 lbs. of apples that are dirty and not too pretty you need to wash them so I always wash my apples in the dishwasher:

I wash my potatoes and my pumpkins in there too but that is a story for a different day.  After I wash my apples I just chop them into thirds or fourths because I have one of these amazing machines:

It is on sale at Amazon for $41.46 -  a great price and free shipping

I just pull the stems off but I don't core them or peel them.  I just cook the apples until they are soft and run it through my handy dandy food mill.  And then I have applesauce!

And once you have applesauce  you just put it in the Crock Pot with some sugar, cinnamon, cloves and all spice or you could follow this recipe.

Right now my applesauce is cooking down.  When it is about half of what it was then it will be ready to can.  You only have to water bath apple butter and for it only takes 5 minutes!  It is definitely worth the work.

Well, that is what I have been doing today.  What have you been doing?  Something much more exciting I'm sure.  I don't know though, apple butter is pretty exciting especially on homemade biscuits.