Applesauce + Apple Butter

During General Conference weekend, F was already in India, so I was home alone to listen to the wonderful messages/sermons from our church leaders.**

I had just received a large bunch of apples and decided that applesauce was the way to go and I could work on it in between conference sessions. As it turned out, over the two days, I made ~16 liters of applesauce and then on Wed of that week, cooked another few liters down into apple butter. I also set aside some of the sweetened apple water for syrup (to mix with water as a drink)--that's a thing in Germany--making your own drink syrups. Yum!

I had a nice colorful mix of apples, as you can see.

I have no idea what types they were, but together they tasted great!

There was lots of chopping,

boiling of lids/jars,

as well as of apples,

I also listened to several great TEDtalks, such as Taiye Selasi's talk about being 'multi-local', a term that describes my husband quite well :)

(in fact, I even raided the fridge for more glass jars and scraped the little bits of jam (you know me, not wanting to waste ;)) into a container)

There was also lots of mashing (with a flotta-lotta :) = an awesome, apparently French contraption. Great for mashing pumpkin for soup as well!)

Applesauce
apples, quartered + cored to fill pot
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tb lemon juice
1-1 1/2 liters water (1 1/2 was good when I wanted to use some of the cooking juices to make a syrup)

Apple Butter
5 1/2 quarts of apple sauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
few sprinkles ground cloves
1 sprinkle of salt

The apple butter needed at least 8 hours of cooking and lots and lots of stirring...(Otherwise it could have burned) Crockpots are also great for this sort of thing--that's how my mom does it (or in the oven in with a roaster(?)).

p.s. Thanks again for the pot! We got this pot as a wedding gift from our friends up the road. We would take care of their horses when they were out of town and I even took a few riding lessons there. We have cooked spaghetti, my husband's delicious Argentinian tomato sauce, rice, soup, and now applesauce in it. Thank you!

This was the beginning of the cooking down to apple butter. However, I became impatient so I turned up the heat (but then had to stir essentially constantly.. :) )

**Our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holds a weekend conference twice a year (the first weekend in April and the first in October). Leaders of the church share messages about how to strengthen your family and your faith, how to overcome trials, how to better keep the Sabbath day holy, etc.

Here President Dieter Uchtdorf (the 2nd counselor to our prophet, or the president of the church) shares a great story about a little girl visiting her Aunt Rose and what she learned about faith, hope and love:

Here's another great message from Elder Russel Nelson (president of the 12 apostles) about the power and influence of righteous women. Yay, women power!