I have been apple picking four different times in the past few weeks. In addition to a raging case of poison ivy (and potentially-but-hopefully NOT . . .  Lyme disease?), I have been given some remarkable opportunities to creatively use apples.

 

 

By the time I had finished a small batch of apple sauce and some tasty apple crisp, I thought it might be the end of my apple season. . .

But then I went for a walk with my sister-in-law. After spending the exorbitant 15-25 dollars a bag at various farms around town, when we saw the bruised-but-perfectly-wonderful apples lying around the public park, admittedly a bit crappy-looking, but FREE, well . . . we couldn’t help ourselves.

That’s right, we gathered up the crappy apples . . . or, as I like to call them now:

Crapples

These bruised little freebies might not be the prettiest apples I’ve picked this season, but they have given me the motivation to not ONLY make more applesauce . . .

. . . but ALSO to make my very first solo batch of APPLE BUTTER!!!

Anybody else doing some good old-fashioned canning out there? There’s nothing like the pop-pop-pop of the lids sealing off as they cool, is there?

Happy Fall!