How About Them Apples

 

The title of this post is perhaps my favorite line from the movie Good Will Hunting.

The last remaining apple tree from our wedding orchard is still hanging in there after all these years and has provided us with many an apple over the years. In the past, we've always just picked a bucket full and let the rest go to fertilize the ground underneath or feed the populous deer. But since we fenced it in as part of our garden area expansion, we have been picking more and trying to preserve them for later use throughout the year.

This preservation has usually been one of three ways. I freeze the apples to use in pies, tartes and crisps. I dehydrate apple slices for snacks. I cook down apples in a crockpot to make some applesauce. I plan to do more of the last two again this year but I was looking to do something different other than freezing apples. That method works well and isn't very time consuming but takes up a space in our deep freeze which is perpetually stuffed full. Finding said apples five months later feels like undertaking an artic expedition trying to dig them out from underneath everything we've placed on top of them in the ensuing months. 

Earlier this spring a noted novelist and neighbor of mine, was talking with me and I must have mentioned my desire to preserve apples another way. She said she had a recipe in a cookbook that she had published for canning them into ready for the pie crust filling. Intrigued, I said I was interested and she later gave me a copy of her cookbook. It has sat on our cookbook shelf in the kitchen waiting for this day and I finally got to try it. Her recipe called for processing them in a water bath but I don't have a pot deep enough to do more than four quarts at a time so I modified the recipe by pressure canning them so I could do an entire batch, seven quarts at once. The results look great. Well almost. The jar on the left spewed some of its contents in the canner because I didn't have the jar lid tight enough. It  is a fine line with two piece lids getting them tight enough to let pressure escape but not overly tight to cause the lids to buckle or under tightened (as in my case) where the contents escape in the canner. It still went ahead and sealed but the top apples are no longer immersed so we will probably eat it first.

Since we have so many nice apples this year (few bugs), I think while it is easy processing, I might do a couple more batches of the filling this week so I have enough to go a few years, or if it turns out really tasty, we can give away as gifts.