Apple season has begun !!

Last week Bob and I went to harvest early Gravenstein apples from a friend's tree.We picked about 100 pounds, the question that follows: what do you do with 100 pounds of apples.
All apples are not created equally, these early Gravensteins are not very good for eating out of hand and Bob found that they were not great for making apple wine.
They are good for making pie.

This is all that is left of the pie we made on Monday.

Gravenstein's are also good for making apple cider. Last year I discovered how easy it was to can apple cider. Basically you just heat it up to about 160 degrees F.

Strain it into hot jars.

And process it in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.
Voila, apple cider that you can store for years, if it last that long :-)

We drink it straight, make it into hot spiced cider, use it in marinades and give it as gifts.
This time we put one and half bushels ( about 70 pounds) through our old cider press.

It yielded nine quarts of juice. Bob will core, peel and slice the rest of them. They will be frozen and eventually made into apple butter or pies.