Last Sunday was a day to make applesauce. It is a group effort due to the amount of labor involved in cutting up all the apples, cooking them down to sauce, sending the cooked pulp through the Squeez-o and then canning the applesauce. It becomes something of an all afternoon festival around here.
I like tending apple trees. I like apple pie, and I like apple crumble, and lots of other apple desserts. I also like fresh applesauce. But I don’t really like canning. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think it’s because canning has the appearance of being very fussy-fussy. You must heat this up just so, cool in a particular manner, and be careful to do everything right so the jars seal. Though I know it really isn’t so very hard, it looks like such a hassle that I avoid it.
For the applesauce making and canning we split up the work. Laborers are needed to cut up apples, stir the cooking apples, operate the Squeez-o, and can. Each of us gravitates toward a certain job. I mostly chop up apples as fast as I can and operate the Squeez-o. Teman and Titi head the actual canning operation, and everyone else helps out by either cutting up apples, stirring the pots of cooking apples, or helping with the Squeez-o.
It is a hectic scene: The table is littered with cutting boards and overflowing scraps of apples. Containers of applesauce are positioned here and there, along with strainers full of washed apples, and bowls full of chopped apples. There are pots of apples cooking on the stove, and pots of water boiling. So much steam is being emitted by the cooked apples and the water pots that all the kitchen windows have steamed up.
If you’ve ever gone on a canning blitz, you know what it is like.
Teman likes to say “Let’s rock!” And we do. Someone puts on some fast-paced, somewhat rocky music, turns it up just a little loud, and away we go. Soon steam is billowing everywhere, and the delicious smell of fresh hot applesauce is filling the kitchen. As the hours pass and our full tilt pace continues, things get more and more messy. Water from the dripping strainer gets all over the floor to make a muddy mess, and the apple garbage bits eventually overflow from the table and spill onto the floor as well. The constant pouring of hot applesauce from one container to another as we shuffle it around leads to splatters of applesauce over almost every counter and the table.
We, I confess, end up being rather barbaric. I mean, when all of that wonderful smelling applesauce is pouring fresh and steaming out of the Squeez-o, how can you resist not having some? Of course, civilized people don’t stick their fingers into the dish so they can have a “taste.” When we are at our worst there is a kitchen full of people going around scooping fresh applesauce out of the dish and stuffing it in their mouths and saying “Hmmm! Delicious. Excellent. This is sooo good.” And if that isn’t enough, we allow ourselves to have as many bowlfuls as we want when there is a lull in the work, or when all the work is done.
But don’t worry, all of our germs are killed by the canning process. You don’t have to be afraid of eating some applesauce, too.
After all the applesauce is made, and after every jar is put away, there is still one chore left: washing up. Often someone will pick up the chore, but this past Sunday the canning ran very late, so there was very little time to try to wash the dishes before supper. While we were canning, Mom was making roast chicken for supper. Canning went late, and supper was late, too. It was my turn to wash dishes that night, so I got a late start on dish washing because of the late supper, and I had roast chicken and canning dishes to wash.
Don’t worry–I’m a big boy. I handle it. Being philosophical, I say it could have been worse. At least the chicken dishes weren’t burnt or in need of any real scrubbing. There were only a lot of dishes, not a lot of real hard-to-wash dishes. Still, I was very glad when the last dish was done, and there was no table or counter overflowing with more work.
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