Fall and All Things Good - Applesauce

My sister-in-law, Kendra, and her mom are amazingly crafty and homemakers extraordinaire. From hand crushed wheat bread to wedding dress tailoring, they are my go-to if I need to know where to begin on a project.

So a few weeks months ago, I asked Kendra for her and her mom's secret to their awesomely delicious applesauce. She said it was really easy to make and they even had a hand-cranked machine they used to process it. The only problem? The real secret to the applesauce? The apples. As in fresh from the autumnal orchards. Did I mention it was Spring? Womwommmp...

Hence, when Kendra told me that her mom was heading to the orchard to pick up some boxes of apples, I almost cried with giddiness! If you have never tasted truly homemade applesauce, you really do not know what you are missing. My first experience was at Grandma Horners in  Timbuktu Kansas. When driving back to school after a visit to my parents, I stopped halfway between Missouri and Colorado, just to stretch and take a look at the small red shop that I had passed at least a dozen times in the past. Inside, "grandma" had just made a fresh batch of applesauce and was offering samples. Forget everything I thought I knew, this was nothing like the tasteless beige stuff sold in the grocery store. With my move back to Missouri, I thought I would rarely, if ever have such delicious apple sauce again. But then, at dinner one night, Kendra busted out a partial frozen bag of applesauce she had made and my world was complete once again.

A few days after the initial applesauce-makin-time phone call, we had our apples, our applesauce-makin' machine, and our sleeves rolled-up! Actually, our sleeves were off due to the incredible warm Indian Summer we were having. Whew... 80 degrees and 90% humidity makes for some hot moments of applesauce making. And by hot I mean sweaty, grossness. No cute aprons and sexy pictures for us.

So, here are a few snapshots of the process. I felt an antique look was approriate due to the fact that applesauce making is pretty much an endangered art in American kitchens. Oh ye days of old, how I would have love to have seen thee...

Anyway, we started by simply rinsing the apples. Even that was exciting. (Note the beautiful imperfections of the apples. I love nothing more that a few spots and blemishes so I know my fruit is real!)

How about them apples?! 

Forget my goofy grin here. Just note how incredibly excited I was when this process began. Slicing, boiling, mashing, and repeat! I was fun, really fun, for the first couple of times. I mean, don't get me wrong, Kendra and I were working the apples and loving it (and I ate about a pound of applesauce before it even had time to cool). But let's just face it: it was a long, hot, humid day.

But I digress... Back to the happiness! 

See this pile? One of many. Ya, we do work. But not that much because of THIS:

Ah, this is the lovely machine that did the dirty work. I had made applesauce before and had to hand peel and core Every. Single. Apple. But this thing made our two and a half bushels a breeze. All we had to do was quarter, steam in a big covered pot, and dump into the applesauce machine. No peeling required. The REALLY fun part was the mushing. See for yourself: 

Mush. Mush. Mush. There was more mushing going on in that kitchen that in the Alaskan Iditarod! After mushing once through, we mushed the shmushed stuff again. And once more for good measure. Mmm.... 

After letting the much mushed applesauce cool in a bowl, we ladled it into freezer-safe baggies for later consumption. You can just left that stuff thaw and eat it ice cold, or even defrost it in the microwave for quicker applesauce ingestion.

Here is the gold! I an convinced that in an apocalypse, this stuff would be more than it's weight in gold... speaking of, maybe I should go whip up some more... 

Making a New Life, One Shelf at a Time

Jesse and I are slowly turning my cute little bungalow into a home for our new life together. We are completely naive and untenured DIYers with one quirky house. We have only the knowledge of Google, fellow DIY bloggers, and very limited prior experience. Basically, most of what we do is in the "Welp, here goes nothing!" category. 

This not only applies to our DIY skills, but our life as well. But you can read more about that in our About Us section. 

What was the first thing we tackled in our new-to-us home? Shelves. Simple, right? 

Ha. 

I guess in theory, shelves are simple enough. You pick out some wood lengths/thick boards, stain them, select some sturdy brackets, find your walls studs, and go to town!

Except nothing is ever that easy. At least at our house. What problems, you say? How about a lack of studs in the walls, warped boards due to too much time spent in the garage, and an inability to find " just the right" brackets. Oh, and the walls crumbled when we tried to screw those not-so-perfect brackets into the plaster. Ah, the joys of living with a 84-year-old.  

It all started with a trip to Lowes. Shelves? We wound up choosing thinner boards than I had imagined in the kitchen, but our walls are plaster and we were afraid to put too much weight on them. Therefore, thin = beautiful (in this case at least).

And then life happened. We picked out the boards and imagined this whole shelving scenario when we got engaged... or something. It all happened so fast, I tell ya. Pretty soon, we were eloping, and then moving into my our little bungalow and the shelves just got abandon for a while. And then we had our We-Got-Married wedding fest. And my White Products addiction left us with no choice: the shelves had to be mounted (can I say that on the www?). 

So, we took our by-then-warped boards, slapped some beautiful matte stain and seal on those puppies, and went to work. Jesse used a stud finder and I used my three wishes as we slowly ebgan to attach the brackets to the wall. It was all such a blur, but I do remember a frantic Ace Hardware run due to a lack of correct hardware. With that crisis averted, we placed and attached the boards into place and then we moved Kayna to the furthest corner of the room. It was go time.  

One plate. Two plates. Three plates. Four. White Jug? Check. Weird shaped serving dishes? Check. Slowly, and as calmly as possible, I place each teapot and White Product on the shelves. Nothing happened. Not even a creak. The boards and wall and brackets worked magically. 

And now, I get to enjoy this view when I walk into our bright, happy kitchen:

Ultimately, there were severals yells, a few mutters, a couple we-can't-repeat those, and of course, a big huge prayer when the White Products* were placed on the shelves. 

We are new at this DYI stuff - did I mention that? So, our shelves are far from perfect and our pictures are even further. But we are trying to figure DYI out one day at a time. 

* I, Emily Brinkley, am a white-aholic. I love white things. White plates, white teapots, white animals, white lamps, white bowls, white flowers, white trim... And pretty much anything else you can thing of. I love color, don't get me wrong, but white is just so clean and crisp. Hmm... That reminds me, I need to go whitewash Kayna's dresser. And Lamp.