Birthday and Christmas Love

Several weeks ago now I had my 40th birthday. Shhhhhh, don't tell anyone. Had a wonderful birthday with most of my family (sure missed Jen, Joe and my sweet loves) and a few close friends. The day was pretty low key. We went to a movie and then we all went out to a yummy seafood dinner at the Dead Fish. What a joy to be able to celebrate my 40th year of life with those I care the most about. God has blessed me richly with my family and friends. I love you all very much.

I want to tell you about a few of the birthday and Christmas gifts that I received this year. My gifts were perfect for me. I captured a few on my digital camera.

I received this apple peeler and corer from a dear family. Sure made my job of preparing apples for sauce or jelly much easier.
You spear the apple on the left end of the crank, and you turn the other end.

As you turn the crank, the apple goes towards the peeler and the corer. A small blade removes the skin as you turn. Then the apple goes through the corer and at the same time spirals the apple. All this is happening and the mess fell right into my sink.

All of my apples were now peeled, cored and spiraled. You can see the core still on the end of the spear that was cranked. As you crank the spear the other way the core is pushed off right into my sink with the rest of the apple waste.

My side sink held all my apple spirals. This was just shy of 1/2 a bushel. I then put all the apple spirals into the huge thick steel bottomed pot that my Grandma got me for my birthday. All I had to do was break up the spirals and separate. Added all of them to pot with about 2" of apple juice on the bottom. Cooked on medium high for about 15 minutes. Added cinnamon. Did a taste test and my apple sauce needed no sugar.

All of my peels and cores contained in one place, no mess and super easy clean up. One day I will learn how to compost (it is on my Bucket List- but we will save that for another post on another day) and this would have been perfect for a compost pile.

As I cooked the apples I also got going the rest of the apple juice to make into apple jelly for my dad. Apple jelly is one of my dad's most favorites. I have not made him my apple jelly yet, so, I know he will be happy.

My sister Jen had my name this year for Christmas and she got me the most perfect gift of all. A home canning water bath and kit. Here you can see that my jelly is in the water bath canning process. It is nice to have the bath at the end of the process because while my jars are bathing, I can clean up the kitchen and wash all the dishes. In the Pyrex dish you can see the leftover jelly that would not fit in the jars.

The final product: 4 quarts of apple sauce and 4 jelly jars of apple jelly.

Oh by the way, the apple sauce was completely sugar free except for the apple juice I added to cook the apples down (it was natural juice with no sugar added). The jelly had almost no sugar added, I added about 1/2 cup to the juice that I turned into jelly.