Our Home Works

Over the weekend and into today, we focused our efforts on these sweet fall treats.  The grapes were harvested from vines on the property of a home Amy lived in before we were married and she still owns.  Its not a particularly large planting, but it did produce enough fruit to make it worth our while in processing.  Shown below are grapes on the stem, then picked, then crushed.  After the first crush they were boiled for 10 minutes, then strained.  That’s all it took to make this fine half gallon jar of juice.   It’s very tasty with no sweetener needed.

The apple sauce process was slightly more involved, but overall still pretty easy.  We started with gorgeous Mutsu green apples purchased at Detering Orchards a week ago (see our most recent past blog about that).  This varietal choice for apple sauce was a recommendation from Roger Detering himself.

After giving them a rinse we used our hand-cranked all-in-one peeler/corer/slicer.  This is a brilliant and super easy-to-operate invention.  A must-have tool.

After the skins and cores were gone, the “meat” went into large kettles with a little bit of sugar and lemon juice.  A few hours of cooking down progressed the apples to a sauce, a little on the chunky side the way we like it here.  Heavy sampling prior to canning indicates that this too is a big hit.  The box of apples, minus a few we spared for near-term baking, netted us 18 pint jars to enjoy this winter.