Hmmm, a lot to say so I guess I’ll make this two posts. Today I spent my day in the kitchen, big surprise, right? I went to the Everett Farmer’s market and picked up corn, green beans and apples from my favorite farms. I ate hot corn with butter, salt and pepper on a stick from Gypsy Row Co. I ran into a good friend. And I made sure to take it all in as this was the second to last weekend of the market for this year. You could feel it in the air, fall is here to stay. I’m sad to see summer go, but fall is my favorite season, so I’m definitely enjoying its arrival.

Mike placed an unusual request a few weeks ago while I was canning peaches, he asked for canned apples. I’ve never actually had a canned apple, so I wasn’t sure how to go about that. But then I realized that there was a recipe for them in my canning cookbook.

So today I got a 22 lb box of beautiful Honey Crisp apples from Tonnemaker Farms and made 7 quarts of apples. I figure if we don’t like the canned apples we can always make applesauce from them. And just to hedge my bets a bit, I also made 5 quarts of apple sauce. I might make a few more next week, but I’m not sure if I will or not.

I added just a bit of cinnamon and allspice to both the sliced apples and the applesauce. I used a 10% sugar syrup for the slices. And I added just 2/3 c sugar to the total volume of applesauce as I’d rather add brown sugar when we eat it then have it be too sweet.

To get through peeling and slicing that many apples, I bought myself a new apple peeler and corer. I happened to be at the mall on Friday night looking for a new pair of chic walking shoes for my trip to Italy and stopped into Williams Sonoma just because. They had their handy tool on display up front and I decided it had to be better than doing all that peeling by hand. And it was! It did a nice job of peeling all except the very largest apples as they were too big in diameter for it. And for the apple sauce it sliced the apples into neat spirals that were perfect for cooking down. Not normally one to recommend a product, but really this might be the best $28 I’ve spent lately.

 Cost: $38 for 22 lbs of organic Honey Crisp apples at $1.75 per lb. That works out to just over $3 per quart.

I’m not counting the cost of the jars as we can use them again and again - they’re an investment, as is the apple peeler as it’s apparently good for potatoes too.