Welcome to the Jungle...er, County

So, I know it feels like every time I get on here, I have an excuse for why I haven't written in forever. But really, I do! A week and a half ago, we packed up our little 2-bedroom townhouse, and moved 45 mins-1 hr out into the middle of nowhere. It's been crazy, exciting, and a million other things all rolled into one. And no, it's not REALLY the middle nowhere - we can get into the city in about 15 minutes, which is perfect for me. We have a beautiful 3-bedroom house (4 if you count the half-finished attic) and 3 acres for our 3 boys to go crazy on! We have a dozen chickens moving in sometime this month, and plans for a goat eventually, as well as a major garden!

But in the meantime, I've been enjoying having a wonderfully large kitchen with plenty of room to get down to the finer things in life - like food!

Or more specifically, canning food. A local farmer's market store has been running an amazing deal. You pick up a ton of produce (for FREE), take it home, and can it! Then, you simply return half of the canned merchandise to the store. It's ingenious, really. They get their produce canned for them (for personal use, not store use) and nothing goes to waste (often the stuff you pick up is close to turning, so you have to do it quickly) and you get free stuff just for doing a little hard work! Since my kitchen obviously hasn't been in any shape to work in from moving, I've been going to a friend's house and helping her put stuff away. We made fermented pickles that were a partial fail - neither of us noted on the calender when we put them in, and by the time we checked them, they had gone too long. But we did manage to salvage 5 pints of relish and 5 quarts of whole pickles!

Then, yesterday, my mother-in-law showed up with bags full of apples! Ok, I can do this. We spent ALL day peeling, coring, and slicing. She made 2 apple pies and I made 8 quarts of filling to can. I used this recipe and used honey for my sweetener. It came out yummy!! Of course, when I went to can it in my large pot that I use as a canner because I don't actually OWN a canner, I discovered that my giant pot is not giant enough to do quart jars. So now I have 8 quart jars of apple pie filling in my fridge. I ordered a steam canner from Amazon with 2-day shipping, so it should be here tomorrow. Then I just have to dump out the jars, warm the contents, put them BACK in the jars, and can them. Frustrating, but oh well.


But the fun doesn't end there! We finished all but 2 big bags of apples. Then this morning we went over to a friend of my mother-in-law's and picked an entire trunk full of apples!!

This was about halfway through - by the time we were done, both buckets were overflowing

So tomorrow I am having whatever friends want to brave the trip out here over, and we are going to go canning crazy! I've already made a ton of applesauce using this recipe (super easy because you don't even have to cook them!) and the applesauce is in my crockpot to make apple butter to can tomorrow. All of that, and I haven't even touched today's apples yet! The applesauce took about 1/2 of one of the bags I had left from yesterday. I'm assuming by the time it cooks down, I'll end up using about the whole bag, but that still leaves another bag and my trunk full of apples to deal with! I'm sure you'll be seeing many apple-related posts in the next several days. So tell me, what's your favorite thing to do with apples?