Quickly after learning the basics of canning from a friend I headed out and got all the supplies necessary.  My Mom, not wanting to rain on my parade, picked up a box of seconds at an orchard and before we knew it we were ready to make sauce.

My Grandma made applesauce that my Mom remembers well.  She in turn has made it but likes to simply put it in freezer bags as she remembers her Grandma serving half-frozen applesauce as a treat for them.  To her, it was like ice cream.




Applesauce seemed like a good place to start.  We were thankful for all the canning blogs out there and found this Classic Applesauce Recipe on Simple Bites to be a great point of reference along with the Ball Blue Book on Canning.

I won't call myself a canning expert but I will share with you some things we learned along the way.

1.  Make sure your sauce is boiling before you can it and make sure your jars are hot before you fill them.  The easiest way we found to get the jars hot was by running them through the dishwasher before we used them.  We also boiled the lips and I loved the magnet tool to get them on without contaminating them.

2.  Add water to your apples, but not too much.  We added too much to begin with and had to take the water out so that we didn't have a sauce that was too runny.  Lesson learned.

3.  Have fun!  Canning can seem like a chore.  If that's your mentality, maybe it's not for you.  I loved the process of seeing Anderson help wash the apples and was thankful that the food mill didn't take too long after all.


Although I've been tempted to eat the sauce up right away I'll try to hold off and enjoy it when fresh apples aren't in season.  I'll enjoy it more too when Anderson can eat it up.  For now, he's rather try to gnaw on the apples himself.