Homemade Applesauce

On Friday my friend Lindsay and I canned 33 quarts of homemade applesauce.  All I can say is WOW!!  It was extremely exhausting.  In fact, neither one of us felt all that great the rest of the weekend.  We did 2 bushels of apples (Cortland & MacIntosh).  We tried using the Pampered Chep apple peeler-corer-slicer but unfortunately it proved to be more of a headache than help.  So, we decided to cheat and just leave the skins on (although I did still peel a lot of the apples) because we found a comment from a recipe that said we could!  Cha-ching!  Needless to say, we were still soooooo tired from quartering/coring apples.  Poor Lindsay ended up cutting herself twice.  I guess if I keep going no one will want to try our applesauce!  Ha!  The girls lasted for a little while in helping us.  Anna announced we were doing "Food Art."  Just wait until you see the pictures and her comment will click with you!  ;)  We started around 1:00 pm and I didn't finish until close to 11:00 pm.  We tried several different 'recipes' such as

• Apples with a splash of cider
• Apples & Pears with a splash of cider
• Apples with a splash of cider, fresh squeezed orange juice, orange zest & cinnamon
• Apples with a splash of cider cooked down with the leftover orange rind

The girls had a grand time being the tasters!  I think Lindsay and I both agreed our favorite is the apple and pear blend.  If we ever do this again, we will either start earlier in the day OR break it into two days.