project

i was looking for a project for the weekend and decided to check out georgia's apple orchards for a bit of inspiration and some fresh air. came home with way too many stayman winesap apples. they're tart and crunchy which is just the way i like them, but perhaps 15+ lbs was a bit too much. decided this would be a great opportunity to tackle canning and preserving. i really haven't done any canning before, and though i generally knew what was involved, i wasn't quite sure how everything would work out. so i took 8lbs of the apples and followed david lebovitz apple jelly recipe he recently blogged about. 

i won't go into details on procedure because lebovitz does a decent job describing it, but he also mentions using the National Center for Home Food Preservation website. looking through it before tackling the jelly, it was clear that it contained lots of good info for future reference. i also watched this youtube series on canning, which was also very helpful. everything went smoothly and i was able to make apple sauce with the leftover cooked apples. just needed to add some simple syrup back into the cooked apples to add some sweetness and thin it out a bit. as far as the jelly goes, the only thing that caught me off guard was how long it took to get the syrup up to 220F. i'm kindda wondering if my thermometer was off a bit... anyway, everything seemed to come out well and now i'll have apple sauce and apple jelly in my cupboard for some time. happy times.