Apples

 

B#5 was a huge help to us girls!

 

 

A friend gave us about 80lbs of apples recently so we have been hard at work trying to use them wisely. Another friend asked me to teach her how to can so on Friday she came over and we made lots of pints of applesauce for her and her daughter. Then on Saturday the girls and I, along with a friend of theirs, finished up the apples by making apple butter, applesauce, apple pie filling and drying some with some cinnamon. They sure were yummy. We still have apples from our trees to do but we may save them for apple cider.

Finally Feels Like Summer

Here in OR it takes a while to feel like summer. Yesterday was the first day of summer and it actually has felt like summer here. Tomorrow may be a different story but for now we are enjoying summer days. Our garden is finally sprouting and doing well for now. DH built me a couple of raised beds which I am enjoying much more than a huge garden.

Today the kids and I went strawberry picking at a local U-pick farm. We picked 100lbs of strawberries. It really goes quickly with lots of hands picking. I give all the credit to the kids since I only managed to pick one bowl full before having to put the baby in the backpack. It is really hard to pick strawberries with a baby in a back pack. Once we got home we had the big task of doing something with said strawberries. We froze a good bit, made a strawberry pancake syrup, blended some up for making jam tomorrow and are attempting to dehydrate some. I am not sure how that is going to turn out yet. They are still pretty mushy but if it works out it will be neat to have them around for snacking or adding to oatmeal and granola bars.

Bean Day

Today was a bean day at our house. On a friend's blog she tells how to make your own "canned" beans. I must admit it really is quite a bit of savings. I bought two pounds of Kidney beans and 4 pounds of Pinto beans at the grocery store for less than $1.00/lb. Out of that I ended up with 12 quarts of canned beans ready to use in any recipe at a moments notice. Normally I would buy cans of beans at the store for about $.70 each but with this I spent about $4.00 and ended up with 12 quarts. I think it was definitely worth it. Sometimes when I make up a big batch of beans I freeze them but I always ended up forgetting to set them out to thaw for dinner. This way all I have to do is pop open a jar and make a meal with it.

Here is how you do it if you are interested...

Soak a big ole pot of beans overnight. I did a huge bowl and a stock pot. Drain and rinse the beans the next morning. Fill your quart jars 3/4 full, add a teaspoon of salt and fill with water. Put your lids and rings on and pressure can according to your canner directions at 10lbs for 60 minutes. Voile...canned beans.

My pictures above are backwards...the first one is the finished product and the bottom one is some of the jars awaiting their turn in the pressure canner.

Next I am going to make homemade refried beans. If you have any tips on that, feel free to leave a comment.