mmm :-)

$6.99/bushel....omg

Sunday I made fresh, homemade, chunky applesauce - the first of the season. I love homemade applesauce!

katiec, we had a spectacular apple year here in Michigan, they are saying the best in 100 years, all the trees are loaded, although they're a bit late because of the cold, wet and rainy summer we had.

Teresa, I'll be canning applesauce soon, and I have 3 trees full of Red Delicious out at the farm. They aren't much good for cooking but they make OK applesauce and the majority of those will go into the cider press.

Annie

You are a busy girl, Annie! Looking good :) I love Apple season best of all!

Sausage looks so good. Have you made any chicken apple? A little sweet but nice grilled with some cabbage!

I think we'll have a good year, too (the orchards are just starting to pick). We have a 30 yr old broken apple tree that we gave up on years ago. It actually has some nice apples on it this year.

I have a box of Washington Fujis on order, but I won't get them for a month. Last year they stored well into spring. We'll get a mix from the orchards for applesauce and I bet I pay way more than 6.99/bu!

Carol!!!! I'm so glad to see you here, it was the Italian sausage that sucked you in, wasn't it? LOL

Annie

LOL!

My apples still aren't ripe yet, but they are beginning to have a tinge of red on them now. I don't think I'll be getting all that many apples, and so I'll probably take the tree out and replace it with something more tropical - it's in the absolutely best spot in the back yard, and I'm thinking that I would rather have a Meyer lemon or Haas avocado there. If I like the apples enough, I might keep the tree another year, but I'm perfectly fine with buying apples when I want them. I want lemons, limes, and avocados all the time, however!

I've been thinking of making apple pie, and I have enough for that now but not the time. I'm much more tempted by your Italian sausage! I'm definitely going to make something with my apples this week, although the ones I have so far are still pretty green. I like apple butter, but I've never made it. I don't think of SoCal as apple country, but they do seem to grow here okay, although they might be slow to ripen. Avocados have a short season, and so I might not go that route. Plus squirrels eat them.

Lars

Beautiful apples! Everything looks so good. I was just thinking yesterday how good homemade applesauce sounded. Guess I need to get to the farmers market to look for apples. Thanks for the inspiration :)

Tracey

Ooooh. I wasn't going to do apple butter this year, but your pictures are making me think otherwise.

Love those 12oz jars! May I ask where you found those?

I was thinking of making sausage when things settle down after Thanksgiving (October for us Cdns). This will be a first for me. Where would I go about getting casings? Any tips you can give me, or T&T recipes?

susy, I got the jars at my local small town independent grocery. I was looking for the 8 ounce jelly jars and this was all they had.

I get all my casings and other sausage supplies from Butcher Packer in Detroit. They are prompt and their customer service is great, plus they are a lot cheaper than most other places. Yes, they do ship.

I use some "recipes", but the Italian sausage is one of Elery's recipes from when he was a teenager. He mixed hundreds of pounds for Mr. Castellici, the Italian grocer he worked for in Monroe. It has ground pork, Moscato wine, grated Asiago cheese, fennel, tarragon, salt, garlic, sugar. For 15 pounds of pork we used about half a bottle of the wine, a couple of cups of Asiago, maybe 1/4 cup of fennel (use less if you don't like it as much as I do) a couple of teaspoons of tarragon, 1/4 cup sugar, garlic/salt/pepper to taste. Mix it up and cook a little bit, adjust the seasonings to your own taste.

My favorite cookbook is Charcuterie, Brian Polcyn has an award winning restaurant in Michigan called Five Lakes Grill in Milford. That book was a gift from Larry Engelhardt and I use it all the time, that's where my pastrami recipe came from, my corned beef recipe, and in the next couple of weeks Elery and I are going to smoke some maple cured bacon.

Annie

Thanks Annie!

Susy, they are called Ball Quilted and come in 4, 8 and 12 oz sizes..

Here is a link that might be useful: Ball Quilted

Annie,
I went to a local orchard today and paid through the nose for a peck of apples, some of which I'm turning into apple butter. It's now 7 p.m. and the apple butter has a way to go. If I can stay awake long enough, when it gets thick, can I put it in the fridge, bring it to boil iin the morning and then put in jars and process?

Thanks in advance,
jude

Jude, of course you can. I do it all the time with various things because I don't always have time after I get off work to completely prepare and can things.

It might take a while to get it back up to temperature, though.

I hope it's not too late, and that you actually see this, although it's been, well, several hours, LOL, and you're probably in bed.

I've been slicing and peeling apples for the dehydrator...

Annie

Wow, I'm a wee bit jealous. When I went to the grocery Wednesday, I was shocked that apples were anywhere from $1.99 to $2.99 a POUND. Crazy.

I've got piles of apples in my kitchen from a couple of friends with trees. Mixed varieties. I think I will be canning applesauce and chutney this weekend. Probably dehydrate some for our Winter cereals too.

A friend gave us a few apples called, "King David" which were very tasty...too few to do anything with them but eat!

Annie, thanks a bunch! I just finished the apple butter, 13 4 oz. jelly jars and 1 half pint, delicious, by the way.

beanthere, the apples were (gasp) 14 dollars a bushel and I conveniently forgot the price of a peck as I bought other things that were not so expensive, winter squash for instance. I'm heading to Europe on the 11th so I limited my perishable purchases.

Thanks y'all.
jude