Applesauce in Colorado

My Aunt Janet and Uncle Cole have sent me photos of their home grown applesauce endeavor for the Colorado edition of the blog. The first photos are of their tree and garden this spring, covered with apple blossoms. So pretty!



Next comes harvest, and they had quite the bounty in red delicious apples! They picked 3 five gallon buckets of apples from their tree.

Here is Cole with some of the freshly picked pears, berries, and apples. Finally comes the applesauce and apple butter. Cole described the process:

"We just cored & de-wormed the apples, cooked the heck out of them (with a little water), ran them through a ricer to remove the skins, and canned them. The apple butter was similar, but cooked longer & with lots of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice...)

It's a good use for organically grown apples. You can cut the bugs out of the ones that go into the applesauce and, at the same time, sort out wormless apples to snack on whole."

They now have 15 quarts of applesauce and pear-applesauce, and enjoyed apple-blackberry cobbler, pear-blackberry pie, apple brown Betty, and blackberry frozen yogurt with their homegrown fruit as well. Janet says that all the cobblers made low-no fat, with minimal sweeterns and diet friendly! She's a Weight Watcher, too.

The love for local foods apparently runs in the family! Janet and Cole are conscious eaters, and Janet's daughter and son-in-law, Panaena and Joe, are local eaters, too. They had a locally sourced cocktail hour at their wedding reception last summer. Janet just sent me a link to our cousin Jim's new website: http://localfoodeconomygame.com/ Their goal is to:

increase the production and consumption of wholesome foods grown and sold
locally. We are developing a web-based exploratory learning environment where
folks can have fun while deepening their appreciation of the social and economic
impacts of "Buy Fresh, Buy Local."