Apples. What do we think of when we think of apples? I think of cool crisp Autumn days. Fireplaces ablaze to take the chill off. The smell of smoke in the air. And in our home, the sweet, heavenly scent of apples fragrant fruit wafts throughout the house as we preserve the bounty.
We make and can lots of sauce with the apples. We also make and can apple pie filling. We freeze apple crisp filling too. We make apple pie jam. With the sauce we often make apple leather. This allows us to enjoy those delicious apples year round in many ways!
I like to roast my apples for sauce. In my opinion, the flavor is much better than that of steaming them. The sugar concentrates and the sauce has a wonderful flavor. I do not add anything to my sauce. It is delicious as is. These beautiful red fleshed apples are Almatas. This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Coming Home to Eden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
After roasting until soft as you see here, I run the apples through my Kitchen Aid mill. The mill makes light work of making sauce. All I do is wash and half or quarter the apples and roast them. The mill spits out the skins and seeds. This attachment is actually called a Fruit & Vegetable Strainer. I do use the wide tray too. I have used this set up for more than a decade. From this point I either can my sauce in a water bath canneror make leather. We ALWAYS have some fresh off the mill. It always tastes SO good that way!
My kids love fruit leather. I always make apple leather during apple season. It is a great way to take applesauce on the road! I love my Excalibur dehydrator. I have used mine for so many things since 2014. For leather you will need sheets in your dehydrator.
I like to can sauce in quarts and pints for our family of four living at home. Apple pie filling in pints and jam in 8 ounce jars. I love the seeing my pantry fill with food for the year! Happy preserving!
My child was up most of the night with a bad cough. I threw everything I could think of at it. Many different homeopathic remedies. Cell salts, tinctures, teas. I looked for cough drops locally online and couldn’t find anything within a half an hour drive that didn’t have something she couldn’t have in it. I decided to make some. I didn’t have much honey left but my husband just picked up our years supply of maple syrup. I don’t like to use honey in cooked recipes anyway. Seems like a waste to kill good raw honey. I will share with you my experiment. I am not a doctor. I am merely sharing my experience.
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I made an herbal tea. I added mullein, echinacea, chamomile, and gingerroot to a tea infuser. You could just add it to a jar and strain it. Bring a cup of water to a boil, shut it off and pour over herb mixture. Let steep until cool.
Well steeping, prepare molds or surface for the cough drops by sprinkling some slippery elm powder. I used a tea strainer as a sifter. It worked great.
Add 1 cup of tea to a sauce pan with 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 a cup of maple syrup. mix well and put on medium heat. Stirring occasionally, bring the mixture to 300 degrees. You will need a candy thermometer. It takes a while to get to that point but all of the sudden it moves quickly so don’t walk away!
Once it reaches temperature, remove from heat and stir it until the bubbling calms down. Pour into prepare molds. I needed a third mold which was not prepared ahead. If using these molds, prepare 3 ahead. You have to move quickly because the mixture with harden.
I used a tablespoon to pour from the pan. It worked well.
I sifted more slippery elm powderover them. These hardened so quickly that I was able to take them out of the molds shortly after pouring. Do be careful, they will be hot!
They popped out beautifully from the molds. Way easier than chocolate.
I popped them out directly into this cute chunky jar. They fit perfectly.
My daughter said they were good. She only tasted the maple syrup. It smelled heavenly as it bubbled away on the stove top. The combination I smelled most was of chamomile and maple syrup. Enjoy!
The cool weather of fall brings the beautiful scent of ripe grapes. As a child, I remember going to the farmer’s market with my mother and getting the delicious seasonal treat of Concord grapes. I loved them. They were definitely a favorite of mine. When we had the opportunity to grow them, we planted 36 vines of which were mostly Concords and Niagaras. We also planted a handful of seedless varieties for dehydrating. In addition to fresh eating, I wanted enough juice for the year. At the time, we were purchasing grape juice for kefir soda regularly.
Grapes are a quick turn around plant to invest in. I say start with your fruit when you ”land” as it takes the most time to produce…but, not all fruit takes a long time. Grapes are pretty quick. And when you taste your first grapes…they will be well worth the investment!
We bought our plants from Double A Vineyards. Before the plants arrived we prepared. I designed the layout. We removed sod. We marked and dug holes. The holes were not sufficient for the massive roots on the plants we received. We had to dig the holes much deeper. I was very pleased with the plants.
This is my version of a modified Munson system which is much like a clothes line. Wires were put into the horizontal piece at the top. The grapes hang down from the top wires for easy harvesting.
Grapes can take a few years to produce which is a short wait when compared to fruit trees. Some vines can produce for well over a human beings lifetime. This makes planting grapes a very good investment. Planting them is simple. We did nothing to the soil. We dug holes and planted at the recommended spacing and provided them with something to climb on. We do not fertilize them nor do we use any sort of pesticide or herbicide on them. We prune them in early spring and sometimes a little in the summer if the vines get in the way of other plantings. Some of our vines are in a bed that has been sheet mulched. Some are not. We simply weed whack around those only for our ease of picking. Grapes are VERY hardy in general. We don’t water them with the exception of the year we planted them. Because the roots are so deep, once established, they do not need watering here in the north eastern United States. Depending on where you live, they may.
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Once you have established grapes, you can eat them! And eat them….and eat them. You can also get yourself a steam juicer and make yourself some juice. Steam juicing is incredibly simple. We use a large harvest basket to gather the grapes. We fill it once, then pluck grapes. I do not like the taste of the juice as much when leaving the stems on. I have some nice stainless steel bowls with lids that I pluck the grapes into. That way I can pop them in the fridge if I don’t have enough for a juicer load. Once done with that basket load, I start juicing.
So, how does one steam juice you ask? My steam juicer has three chambers. One for water (bottom). One for collecting juice (middle). One for your fruit or vegetables (top). To start you put water in the bottom of your steam juicer. Put the juice capturing chamber above that. Pour plucked grapes into the top of your juicer. Cover with lid and turn on the burner. Before long, your home will smell amazing! The best part is this…the juice comes out piping hot. I prepare my jars as usual for canning. I run a small amount of juice through the tube, and dump it back in the top to sterilize the tube. After that, I fill my jars to about 1/4 inch from the top, wipe, place lid & screw top, put on cooling rack. Done. No water bath necessary. If you were canning something non acidic, other methods would be needed. I have been doing this for several years and have had no problems. I love the ease of it. I have a Cook N Home 11 quart steam juicer. Do be sure to check the water in the bottom chamber every now and then. If it runs out the juicer can get damaged and the taste of your juice can be affected.
I place a stool next to the cooktop and place a dark colored towel down to catch any drips of juice that go where I don’t want them to go. It happens and it stains particularly well with concords. I then get a prepared jar one at a time as I fill them. I prefer regular mouth quart size (32oz) canning jars for juice. The regular mouth is easier to pour than the wide mouth. I sometimes do a few half gallon jars for gatherings. I place them on a cooling rack upside down to drain after washing so no dust, etc gets inside. I prefer Ball canning jars. They are made in the USA.
Steam juicing is a simple way to put up juice to enjoy all year! I have also used my steam juicer for apples. Apples are nice to use because when you are done juicing, you can run the pulp through a mill and have sauce. Double duty. I hope you are inspired to juice some fruit! Enjoy!
