It's That Time of Year Again

When you think of OU/Texas, what do you think of?  Many think of great football, fall weather, Texas State Fair, yummy football food, etc.  In our family it is a little different.  Yes, we are football fans and enjoy a healthy rivalry between OU and Texas, but our weekend generally revolves around a different activity...making applesauce.  Who makes their own applesauce in todays world of Musselmans and individual serving cups from the shelf?  We do.  And it is SO much better than anything you get at the store.  It may be because of all the blood, sweat and tears (blood from cutting the apples a little too vigorously, sweat from all the cooking, and tears because it takes from sun-up until WAY after the sun goes down).  It is a ton of work not to mention the pain we go through just getting to Grandma and Grandpa's with the two kids.  Let me tell you, seven hours is a long time for anyone to be in a car.  When Linden and Calvin are added in to the mix seven minutes is about enough to want to turn around and go back home. 

 

We survived the drive, though, and enjoyed the beautiful weekend.  Travis was the main apple cutter and had a little bit of help from Linden.  She would "help" wash the apples, all the while taste testing several.  She had taken bites from a few before we became aware of what she was doing.

    

After that she was limited to one complete apple at a time.  Kendall, Kenta, Natalie, and Soren were all smashers, scoopers, toppers, and watchers.  The process really isn't that complicated.  Once the apples are cut, they are put into big pots and cooked until they are nice and mushy.  Then we put them through the smasher(a very technical term, I know) that is cranked by hand.  The smasher squashes the apples through a strainer where it separates the good juice and sauce from the other stuff.  The seeds and peel are pooped out the end and are then disposed of in the garden or fed to the cows next door.

   

Once a pot of apples is squashed it is now officially applesauce.  When we first started doing this many, many years ago when I was little (or maybe not even born) we added sugar and coloring to the mix.  Now it is pure apples and nothing else.  It is the best tasting stuff on earth.  Especially with warm, homemade cookies, but I digress.  The applesauce is then put in mason jars which are boiled in a pot of water to seal the lids closed.  It is not a difficult process in terms of the steps that are involved, but it certainly is time consuming.  Thanks to my dad and his streamlining we have been able to cut down the time considerably.  It also helps to have three camp stoves to be cooking on at once.

I have to  admit.  Most of my time was not involved in applesauce making this trip.  Poor Calvin was diagnosed with an ear infection about twenty minutes before we took off to Grandma and Grandpa's so he was cranky and hurting.  He's feeling much better now though.

Linden was in her element.  We spent a month at Grandma and Grandpa's earlier in the summer and Linden was so happy to be back.  She played with all of the toys, scratched Yukon's belly (their old husky), fed the cows and fish, and just got dirty.  It was fun to see her enjoy being outdoors and not even think about the Twelve Dancing Princesses or Dora.  She even got to see Travis go down the zip line and was adventurous enough to climb the jump-off tower.     

As much as I hate going on road trips with the kids, they really aren't bad travelers.  Calvin doesn't sleep very well outside of his bed, so that makes it kind of hard to keep him entertained the whole time.  I've discovered that binkies and crackers will only last a couple of hours.  We took a pit stop on the way home and Calvin discovered some really big balls he wanted to play with.  Too bad they were stuck to the ground.

   

All in all it was a great weekend.  A family tradition we hope will continue for many years.

Oh, by the way, we canned 36 boxes of apples (40 lbs. of apples per box) and ended up with about 500 one quart jars.