Applesauce

The other day, L and I raided the damaged produce cart at the grocery store. We came home with four packs of tomatoes, one pack of red peppers, and one pack of apples. All of the tomatoes and one single pepper have been turned into meat sauce (which was then turned into lasagne last night OM NOM NOM), and just the apples taunted me. I knew that I wanted to make applesauce, especially as I'd opened my last jar a few weeks ago. The fact that the sauce inside was runny and too sweet was mildly disappointing.

So today, I chopped up all of the apples, added a bit of water and the runny applesauce and set it to cook down. It cooked down about 5 hours or so, and then I deemed it worthy. :-P (As the previous applesauce was too sweet, I didn't add any additional sugar or spices.)

Keeping in mind my failure recently, and remembering that I STILL am without my jar lifters (grr), I was a little more cautious this time around. Heeding Francesca, I popped the jars into the oven to warm, instead of submerging them in hot water. I then took great care in using my silicone gripper and a wide spatula when lowering the jars into the water.

According to my Ball Blue Book of Canning, applesauce should be waterbath canned for 20 mins. They've been in there for at least 10 minutes (I'm timing for when the LAST jar went in, because you can't overprocess them by a few minutes) and when they are done, I will remove the WATER with a measuring cup (I did this last time to great effect) and thus, minimize any attempts to burn myself.

When this is all complete, I will have 7 jelly jars (8oz) of applesauce for the minimal price of $1.

UPDATE: Success! 7 jars and no burns! :-D