Apples, Apples, Apples Galore!

My parents have an apple tree but they don't usually bother to pick the apples on it. This year, they had to trim some of the branches, so by necessity, they picked some apples. I was the recipient of a very large box of apples-at least 20lbs worth of them. At least. They are pretty small apples and a variety that I'm not too fond of the skin, so what the heck am I to do with 20lbs of apples? This week we've been cooking lots and lots of apple things. I made 2 batches of apple sauce, using nearly 100 apples (I had to count to guestimate how many equalled a pound-it doesn't make sense writing it, but trust me, there was more than just OCD going on for why I counted them.) I made two batches on two separate days and even tried my hand at canning, and it appears to have gone well. I suppose a month from now when I open a jar of my canned apple sauce, we shall see how truly how well it went. I made up 5 (small) jars of apple sauce with one some left over for us to eat this week. It was quite the chore to make the apple sauce, as I left the peel on and thus had to go through a long process of getting the peel out of the finished project, but I have to admit, there was something almost spiritual about making my own apple sauce. The second day I made it, it nourished my soul as much as my body.

We've also had apple pancakes (SO good!), pumpkin apple muffins (again SO good!) and I've juiced a few of the apples. I mixed in some carrot and kale, so the juice was packed full of nutrition.

I still have a bunch of apples left-enough to make 3 more jars of apple sauce at least-so I need to figure out what else I'm going to do with them. I am considering trying apple butter, but I've run out of jars to can with and not sure we'd eat it all before it went bad. I also have a super tasty apple cake recipe as well as the stand by of apple cobbler. So we shall see. Right now I'm completely loving figuring out what to do with these apples as well as the finished project. YUM!