Apples, Apples and More Apples!!

Yay for apple season!

There were a lot of things I wanted to try making with apples this year, so I was ecstatic when my father-in-law stopped by one Sunday morning and said his neighbor had 2 trees full of apples I could come pick for free! So I spent the afternoon picking tons of apples and researching recipes.

I started with 1 batch of each recipe I wanted to try. So I made up 6 quarts applesauce, 3 quarts of apple pie filling and 3 pints of apple butter, which barely made a dent in my apple supply! So then came more applesauce, more pie filling, and a different apple butter recipe to try. With plenty of apples still left, I had my mom dig up some of my grandmas old recipes, and I made 2 batches of apple crisp for the freezer. At this point I was running out of ideas, time and good apples, so I just made more applesauce (I had found a lot of recipes that use applesauce in them, so I figured I would be able to use it up) and chopped and froze some apples to make more apple crisp with.

After I used up all the apples I had picked, I found a recipe for apple chips that sounded yummy. Since apples are so cheap this time of year, I had a bunch in the fridge, so I baked some up. They were pretty good too! The boys ate them up like crazy! They are weirdly addicting, so they didn't last too long around here.

Final count: 16 quarts of applesauce, 2 quarts of cinnamon applesauce, 6 quarts of apple pie filling, 5 pints of apple butter, 2 apple crisps, 12 cups of chopped apples, and a couple cups of apple chips. Needless to say, I won't have to buy applesauce for a LONG time, and we will have lots of yummy apple treats to eat this winter!

I did the math, and I used over 270 apples!!! And they were all free!