Slow Cooker Apple Butter

We interrupt this regularly scheduled update with a recipe for you to try. It's fall out there, you wouldn't know that today with the surprise inch of snow on the ground, but that usually means apples. Lots and lots of apples. We have one lonely apple tree on our property that does produce a couple of apples, but unfortunately, the raccoons seem to get them each year. We do, however, have lots of neighbors and friends with apples, and LOTS of orchards nearby. Mmm, apple pies, apple sauce, and cinnamon-spicy apple butter. Yum!

As I mentioned before, I posted on Facebook that I had some apple butter simmering in the slow cooker, and I had a request for the recipe. I tried to sit down and write it out and quickly realized I didn't know how many apples I used or the names for the different tools I used, so I thought I'd make some more and do some measuring and picture taking this time.

First thing we had to do was get some more apples. We decided to visit one of the local orchards. We had a 1/2 bushel of apples in less than 30 minutes and less than $15. It was fun traipsing through the orchard and chatting with the owners about apples and stuff.

 

Did you know 2 pecks equal 1/2 bushel? I didn't. I didn't even know how much a peck was, but now I do. Each of these bags holds 1 peck (maybe a little more, but they were pretty generous. :o).

 

Start by washing the apples and then coring and slicing. I use this peeler, corer, slicer thingy. Again, I don't know it's real name, that's just what we call it. My peeling blade is dull now and doesn't do a great job of peeling, so I just core and slice. You can save yourself a step later if you peel them now though. 

This is the crock pot that I use. I'm still not sure what size it is, but you can see it's pretty big. I just core and slice until my pot is full. When I say full, I mean as full as I can possibly get it and still put the lid on. We used all but 10 apples from one of our bags, so that was about 20 apples, I think.

To the apples add 2 cups sugar, 3 t cinnamon, 1 t cloves and 1/4 t salt. If you feel your apples are a bit dry, you can add 1/4 cup apple cider or juice (or even water) if you need to. I usually find that that isn't necessary. Then put the lid on and let the crock pot do the work. Cook on high for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, the apples should look like this and smell simply divine. :o) Now turn the crock pot down to low and let it cook for 12-13 hours. I usually try and start my apple butter in the afternoon so I can let this part go overnight. 

In the morning, you will wake up to this yummy, warm, cinnamony, spicy delicousness. As you can see, the apples cook down quite a bit. If you have already peeled your apples, you can simply take a whisk and give this a good stir to break up any lumps and smooth it out. Then freeze or can in a boiling water canner.

Since I didn't peel mine ahead of time, I ran the sauce through my "apple sauce thingy". Not sure of it's name, but this is what we use to puree cooked apples and make applesauce with. It's pretty easy to use--chunky apple butter goes in the top, smooth apple butter comes out the chute, and your peels come out the far tube. Michelle's favorite job is pulling the peels out of the tube. The hardest part of this thing is taking it apart when you're done and cleaning it. 

Much better, nice and smooth with no peeling strings in it. :o) I also like to taste mine now to see if it needs any additional sugar or spices. Who are we kidding? I taste this at least once an hour throughout the cooking time that I'm awake. Kind of surprised I don't sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night for a taste. :o) We used Fireside apples this time, and we definitely noticed a more sour note to the sauce than the last batch.

I prefer to can my butter rather than freeze it as I like to send it to family and friends for Christmas. There are lots of tutorials online for canning so I won't go into details on that, but I did process these in a boiling water canner with 1/4 headroom for 10 minutes.

I guess that about does it. Hope you give this a try and let me know what you think. I think I'm going to go see if there's any apple pie left. :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

September Part 1

Well, September was a busy month for us. I don't think we've had this many "mini vacations" in the last 5 years put together, but we managed to be out of town almost every weekend of the month. It was a whirlwind of a month and I'm so glad I took pictures so I can go back and enjoy it again at a slower pace. :o)

The first of the month wasn't so happy though, as we had to say "good by" to our little birdie. Yep, she flew the nest. I managed to get some pictures when we dropped her off at the airport.

We tend to act goofy in uncomfortable situations, and saying good by is always uncomfortable for us.

 

This isn't goofy, it's actually pretty normal for them. 

Look, I did get one good one of my 3 little birdies. :o)

And us. This was right before the waterworks started.

Well, she's now living in CA with her Marine. Wish they were stationed a bit closer, but I am learning to use my smart phone and text her often. I'm even learning to send photos. Apparently Michelle has learned how to send videos to her too. Didn't even know we could do that.

Anyway, I will close this here. Handsome Hubby needs the internet and I have a kitchen to get cleaned up.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.

June, July and August Montage

I'm back. Did you miss me? Here are the next 3 montages for you.September was crazy-busy so it's going to need it's own post, or maybe 5.

June:

1. We enjoyed an afternoon at the lake with some of Mike's coworkers. Michelle was so excited to make a new friend. (6/6)

2. Practicing hand stands. (6/6)

3. This is Layla. She was out stalking some prey in the field. (6/21)

4. Wild Daisies and Indian Paintbrushes in our pasture/field/front yard (we haven't decided on a name for it yet.) (6/21)

5. Daisies are my favorite flower, in case you can't tell. (6/27)

6. This patch was so thick I made Mike mow around it so we had this random patch of flowers growing in the middle of the yard. :o) (6/27)

7. Mike and I built this bed for Michelle's dolls. Found the instructions here. I think it cost us about $20 and about 2 hours of labor. Much better than the $200 or so to buy one. (6/29)

As you can see, we had a pretty laid back June. Actually, I was pretty busy with cakes, but those will some day be posted on my Frosted Memories page so I didn't include them here. 

 

 July:
1. We went to Texas for a nephew's wedding. I'm including this photo because my son is actually in it. That doesn't happen very often. They were cooling off in the jacuzzi. We are so not used to 100+ temps. Thankfully a storm came through and the temps dropped into the 70s for the rest of our visit. :o) We had a wonderful time with Mike's family. Just wish I had some photos of all of us together.(7/14)
2. Have I mentioned my love for daisies?(7/20)
3. Michelle made a fairy house all by herself. I really should have included a photo of the office floor when she was finished. What a mess! She did clean up though. Here's a shot of the furnished rooms. (7/23)
4. She wanted to make sure the fairies felt welcome in their new home. (7/23)
5. Unfortunately, it rained that night. :o( Didn't get any shots of that though. (7/23)
6. It's berry season again. This was our first picking. (7/24)
7. Apparently we had a visitor at the bird feeder. Guess we'll put these away till winter when the bigger "birds" are hibernating. (7/24)
8. "What berry?" (7/29)
9. Had to include this one. I took it after a deer decided to hit us. Seriously, he ran into the back end of our van. We stopped to check out the damage as he jumped off into the woods, and I spotted these gorgeous flowers in the pond. So grateful there was no damage, and I had my camera handy. Gotta thank the buck for stopping us too. OK, that just sounds weird. :o) (7/31)

August:
1. She finally believes me when I tell her she's too big for the fun carts. (8/10)
2. Look what I found while picking berries! They were right at my elbow. Glad I didn't bump their nest. (8/16)
3. Unfortunately my biggest "jackpot" of berries was right by the bird nest. I just thought the mommy bird was yelling at me for stealing her berries. Didn't know her babies were so close. (8/16)
*The last 5 photos were taken at a local petting zoo.
4. This guy's pom pom was cracking us up. (8/17)
5. So cute! (8/17)
6. Be brave, Angel. (8/17)
7. These guys saw the food bags in our hands and made a bee-line for us. (8/17)
8. Lots of cool animals to touch and feed. (8/17)

Woo Hoo! Five months done and I didn't even break a sweat. I have a couple of cakes to work on so I'm not sure I will get the next post up right away, but I'll do my best.

Oh, and I'm also working on a post with a recipe--pictures and all. I posted on Facebook that I had some apple butter in the slow cooker and got a request for the recipe. Thought it might be fun to try and photo the next batch and write it all out, especially since I don't know the technical term for the "apple sauce thingy" and the "apple, corer, peeler, slicer thingy". This way I can have a photo of it and you'll know what I'm talking about. :o)

Well, my Handsome Hubby just got home from a meeting, so I'm going to go see how his day was.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.

April and May Montage

Well, hello there. It's me again. You know, the long lost blogger who isn't so great at blogging. I could give you lots of reasons why I haven't blogged in so long, many of which I've given before...busy life, slow internet, etc. The main reason though is because blogger wouldn't let me. Honest. I tried and tried for almost a week and I couldn't get any photos to upload, and seriously, what's a post without some photos? Eventually, I gave up and haven't really thought about it in a while.

However, we've had some significant changes here that make this journal a little more important to keep up with. The main one being that one of our birdies has flown the nest. :o( She didn't just fly to a nearby tree, no, she up and married herself a military bird and flew to the other side of the US. This mommy bird is very sad, but very happy for her and her new life too. Let's change the subject, shall we, before the faucets on my eyes start leaking again.

Anyway, as I look back through my photos, I realize there is no way to update in detail, so I'm going to give you a couple of photo montages to help speed things up a bit. Here's the first two months:

 April:
1. It looked like spring was finally coming. The snow was melting and the creek was starting to flow. (4/4)
2. Had to include this one again, just LOVE that outfit. :o) (4/8)
3. Spring? Who said spring was coming? How about a couple more inches of snow instead? (4/12)
4. Yep, more snow. (4/14)
5. Oh, looks like it's melting again.(4/17)
6. So, yeah, I had several "firsts" on my birthday this year...I've never made a snowman on my birthday, or shoveled snow, or almost been snowed in. (4/18)
7. That's what our snowman looked like the next morning! (4/19)
8. Trying to find fun things to do inside. (4/19)
9. Thought we'd help the squirrels out by hiding some peanuts in the trees for them. Had to get them up high so our dogs didn't find them. :o) (4/22)
10. Could that be? Looks like spring is coming after all. (4/22)
11. SERIOUSLY?!? More snow!?! (4/23)
12. Ah, that's what spring is supposed to look like. (4/28)

One day I don't have a photo for is April 1. Our daughter Angel flew out to CA to marry her military man, Tyler Brooks. It's a long, complicated story, but she didn't move out to CA right away. She has a couple of photos from the day, but I don't have copies of them.

 

May:

1. Um, yeah, more snow. (5/2)

2. Why haven't we thought of this before? Use the snow on the deck and make a snowman to greet people by the door. Love it! She didn't last long though. (5/2)

3. We decided to escape the snow and head to Iowa so my wonderfully smart hubby could walk across stage and get his Master's Degree. Go Mike!!! Doesn't he look handsome, and smart, and handsome? Sorry. (5/5)

4. Well, better late than never. (5/18)

5. Can you believe there was snow on the ground 2 weeks before this? Shorts! Seriously? (5/19)

6. Oops, this should go before #5. Michelle and I flew to CO to help celebrate with several nieces and nephews as they graduated High School. Managed to get a photo with both my parents and all but one sibling. And we're almost all looking at the camera too. :o)

7. Yes, we have to get some school work done, but that doesn't mean your outfits have to be boring. Love the tutu. (5/22)

8. And you thought you had a dandelion problem in your yard! (No, this is not my yard, just a field nearby.) (5/26)

So, that was our April and May in photos. I will try and get June and July done tomorrow. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings