Canning Apple Pie Filling

This year, since moving, I have been able to home can several different things. Not all of those experiences haven’t been fantastic, but some have been really great! So far I've made strawberry jam, blueberry syrup (it was supposed to be jam, but it didn't set...read about the explosion incident here), homemade salsa, and now I'm canning apple pie filling!

One batch of pie filling cooking on the stove!

Because I'm super partial to my own apple pie recipe I went with that vs. one of the recipes which came with the apple pie canning recipes I looked up. This only allowed me to make enough to fill 2 quart size jars or 4 pint size jars at one time though so that was kind of a pain…but I think it’ll be worth it. I processed each jar of apple pie filling for 30 minutes in boiling water, set them on the counter to cool & seal, and then labeled them with the date before storing them in my pantry. I’m really excited about having the pie filling on my shelves!

One really big thing you’ll want to note before canning apple pie filling is that you do want to leave a good bit of space at the top of the jars you fill so that once the hot water bath process is completed and the jars are out on the counter they will seal. If you fill them too full the liquid mixture will overflow and cause the jars to not seal. If/when this happens you have to re-clean off the edges of the jars, wash the lids and re-process in a hot water bath...all of which can be quite a pain!

First Apple Pie of 2013!

I did end up baking an Apple Pie earlier this apple season and it was to die for! I've started using all brown sugar in my recipe instead of white sugar. This gives a caramel like taste to the pies and I LOVE it! Last year I shared the Grandma Karon's Apple Pie recipe...it's basically the same thing as in the photo above except now I like to use 1/2 cup of brown sugar instead of the 1/2 cup of white sugar on the ingredients list.

I gave away two jars of the pie filling. One went to my grandparents. My Papa asked me where I learned how to make such yummy pie filling and my Great Mary told me the apples tasted great on homemade biscuits too! This is definitely something I will be doing again next year as I am a huge fan of apple pie filling!

I've added this post to my Real Food Journey label since the apples came off the tree in my back yard and I used regular ingredients to make the pie filling. Home canning is a great way to preserve real foods.

Freezing Fresh Green Beans

A few weeks ago I had a mountain of green beans come in from the garden. These plants had been growing since before Hubby & I bought the house and I’m quite surprised at how much they’re still producing. Hubby isn't a huge fan of green beans, but he will eat them if I fix them up good with bacon grease and a little salt.

Having so many green beans was a little stressful. I had discovered, when looking for a canning recipe for green beans, that you have to use a pressure canner and I don’t have one of those so canning them was not going to be an option at this point. My next thought was to cook them and eat them…and we cooked some and ate them, but there was still a mountain left. Finally I thought about freezing them…and this is what I did:

The green beans had been sitting on my dining room table for probably two days and I knew I needed to do something with them soon before they went bad. Finally one day I sat down and started snapping off the ends of the green beans. I had three piles: one of raw green beans, one of the ends and pieces to compost, and one of the green beans without ends which had been snapped in half (and the longer ones in thirds). Once this time consuming process was finished I rinsed the good parts of the green beans to remove any dirt. I then measured them into quart size freezer bags and labeled them with what they were (even though I doubt I’d forget that) and the date they were processed into the bags.

I ended up with about 2 quarts of green beans when all that was done. It sure felt like a lot of work for such a small outcome. The two bags are now in my freezer waiting for the next time I want to fix green beans. If I get more green beans out of the garden I plan to repeat this same process so that they don’t go to waste.

You might remember this post I wrote in July about working towards having healthier foods and the "Real Food" Journey. Growing and freezing your own green beans is a great way to have healthy food without the added things store-bought frozen green beans or even a can of green beans would have in it.

Buying Fresh, Buying Local

The past few months I've been visiting a little local store in town that sells fresh vegetables & fruits, many of which are organic grown and are super tasty! Not only that but just a few weeks ago I started going to the local Farmer's Market and shopping at the many stands there as well. I've found a lot of great tasting vegetables this way and I've really enjoyed it (Autry doesn't really like fresh vegetables like I do...I like cucumbers, he doesn't..etc).

In more recent weeks I've been reading different things about eating "Real Food" and that has really inspired me to work harder on eating healthier...now that doesn't mean I eat right or good all the time, but I think I've improved a lot from where I/we were when we first moved in together. I hope to keep working towards the eating Real Food goal, but I know it will take time.

For now I thought I'd share a few photos of the different things I've bought over the past month or so from either the local organic food stores, farmers market, or straight from the farm!

This was one of my trips to the local Health Food Store. I found a lot of great things there that day. My favorite were the yogurt covered pretzels (pictured below). Other things I picked up that day: Almond Oil, Date Pieces in Oat Flour, Banana Chips, and Almond Slivers.

Date pieces from the Health Food Store. They were TASTY!! I would buy them again.

Yogurt Covered Pretzels. These were really good...even hubby liked them!

This 8oz. bottle of Almond Oil was on sale for like $6. I was thrilled! It's so hard to find almond oil...

Fresh Picked Blueberries from a local Blueberry Farm! I picked them myself and BOY are they delicious! You can't really tell in this photo but they're actually really big berries... I have a post in the works of picking berries on the farm. I bought quite a few of the 'jelly berries' to make Blueberry Jelly. When I make it I'll be taking lots of photos so I can blog how that experience goes!

Pancakes with Fresh Blueberries & Bananas for breakfast! I have two different pancake recipes which are both really tasty: Oatmeal Pancakes and/or Fluffy Pancakes.

These tomatoes are vine ripened and were picked up at my favorite local organic foods store. I've stopped by to pick these up twice now in the past few weeks they are that good!

My favorite way to eat them is sliced and a nice bit of salt on them! They are SO juicy!!

These nice big cucumbers were bought at the farmers market. I haven't tired them yet, but I'm sure they're delicious! My favorite way to eat cucumbers is with a little salt and a lot of ranch dressing! (See here.)

Fresh Farm Eggs! Nothing beats them!! These were purchased at the farmers market as well. I've gone back to get them more than once, they're really good!

Finally we have fresh peaches...but these are no ordinary peaches, they were FREE! Why? Because they were considered 'bad' and the lady wasn't able to sell them...so she gave me a bushel and a half... I made it all up into Peach Butter (a lot like apple butter!). I probably could've saved some of them and put into baggies to freeze for peach cobbler, or other baked goods, but I didn't.

Here's how our peach butter turned out. Doesn't it look tasty?? Recipe & directions for making this coming soon!

I've purchased other things from the farmers market and local stores such as Strawberries, Onions, Potatoes...but I don't have photos of them because I wasn't thinking about writing a post about them until recently.

Do you shop at the Farmer's Market?