Apples galore!

I don't think I've mentioned here that Evan is teething. All four front teeth at the same time, in fact. So last weekend when we went out to Wisconsin to make apple sauce with my cousins, Evan was pretty needy. Despite that, I was able to do quite a bit and contributed to making 61 quarts of apple sauce in one day! Of which our family gets 20 quarts. For basically free -- just the cost of gas to and from Wisconsin and two packages of lids for the jars. Pretty great! We didn't add anything to the apple sauce but a little lemon juice to retain the color. It's a mixture of several different varieties of apples, and it is delicious! Thanks to Amy's food mill attachment to her KitchenAid stand mixer, making the sauce went pretty fast! I left before the rest of the cousins were done. I think the total for the day ended up being about 80 quarts.

I took home some whole apples to slice up and freeze for pie. My cousin Katie gave me a great tip, which I tried today.

• Peel, core and slice up the apples (8 cups)
  
• Mix the pie ingredients in with the apples (flour, sugar, cinnamon, etc)
• Place into a freezer bag and seal it up
• Place the sealed freezer bag inside of your pie plate, arranging the apples into the confines of the plate
• Put the whole thing in the freezer
• Once frozen, remove pie plate

Then, when you want to make a pie, all you have to do is make a crust and plop the frozen apple pie mixture right into the crust, top it with the top crust and bake frozen. I need to double check how long to bake it. I got enough apples for four pies. I haven't tried baking the frozen apples into a pie yet, but I thought it was a pretty great idea!

Other things I did today:

• Baked a loaf of bread
• Prepared an egg bake for breakfast tomorrow
• Played with my beautiful baby boy!

A day well spent.