Apple sauce, Halloween 2010

We made apple sauce all day on Halloween this year. We bought a full bushel of Jona Gold apples at a local orchard and set up our kitchen assembly line. Brian peeled and cored the apples on our little hand crank coring machine, and he got each big pot of apples cooking- stirring, adding about 1/2 to one cup of water, and a few dashes of cinammon.

My job was to fill the sterilized pint jars with the finished apple sauce, process the jars in the boiling canning bath for 15 minutes, then give the lids a final tightening and let cool, making sure they sealed properly. I like to hear the little metallic "ping!" of each lid as its vacuum dimple pops in while the jars cool in stacks on the kitchen table. I think of it as little temple bells ringing.
One bushel yielded 38 pints (19 quarts) of really good apple sauce. We figure if we eat an average of one pint per week (and don't give away more than a couple of jars), this will last us into next June, when fresh fruit will again be available locally.