Oh what do you do in the summer time when all the world is green?

Well here in AZ our world for the most part isn't green like all the world. But we do have some green here and one of the green things we get is trees. One of the things I love to do...I know it's crazy but honestly I LOVE to can food. I think there is just something amazing about the feeling you inside when you see all the food in nice rows of jars all completed. To know that you took it from a tree to a jar that can be eaten whenever is convenient with only one day worth of work.

My friend picked something like 7 or 8 bags this size of fruit from another amazing friend's house.

We then washed and readied the apples to start cooking. The great thing about applesauce is there is so little prep work needed.

The downfall of canning is the fruit never seems to be ripe when it's convenient. So it's something you just have to rearrange your life and make time for. But it's so worth it! The biggest thing I would love is to figure out how to make it cool outside when I can and heat up my house, but oh well, it's worth it!

After the apples are cooked they go into a handy applesauce maker. There are different types but this is the one I have which handily attaches to my kitchenaid.

You don't have to peel or core the apples. Just pop them in the attachment and out one end comes fresh applesauce.

Out the other end comes the peels and cores and seeds and such. My kids love to call it the apple poop. Yep, that's the kind of kids I have. But it makes life so easy they can call it what they want when it takes away so much work for me!

Stir in a little sugar and/or cinnamon to taste and scoop it into the jars (We always eat some fresh for dinner with chicken nuggets. My kids don't eat nuggets now without applesauce, it just goes together.)
Then you put it in the water bath canner for 15 min (no picture of this sorry). That's it.

And in the end you have this amazingly beautiful rows and rows of applesauce. I just love it! I love seeing all those jars and jars. Since these were canned for my friend I never get an end count of how many jars we made that day but I would guess around 27 quarts. Not too shabby for one day of work!