My Stripper

Let’s clear something up real quick here, before things get even more out of hand. No, this post is not going to be about my experiences as a “corner worker” (not that that ever happened)! It’s about my new favorite kitchen toy, my Dazey Stripper:

I got it from a good family friend a couple years ago (for free!!!) but I hadn't used it yet!

I’ve never canned anything entirely on my own. I’ve helped my mom a plethera of times and always just done what I was told, but for the first time I was the one making the decisions. And, shockingly, I produced an edible product: Chunky Applesauce!

Here’s the recipe:

Amazing Chunky Applesauce

3-4 pounds of apples, peeled, cored and quartered

4 strips of lemon peel

juice of 1 lemon

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 C. brown sugar

1/4 C. white sugar

1 C. water

1/2 t. salt

Place all ingredients in a large (heavy) pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Remove from heat, remove cinnamon sticks and lemon peels. Mash with a potato masher until desired consistency. (Leave somewhat chunky!) Pour into clean jars, add lids and rings then process for 25 minutes in water bath.

So, let’s get to work. First, I peeled 7 large-ish baking apples. Thankfully, this is where my stripper took over.

It’s awesome, it takes about 10 seconds to peel an apple. Now if I could just figure out something fun to do with the leftover strips. Anyone got any ideas?

Next, I pulled out my apple plate

Cuz it seemed fitting. Then I took my 7 apples…

And lopped the tops off. Then I cored and sliced them into 8 pieces. (I know the recipe says to quarter them but I was trying to take the easy road, here!)

Here’s my final pile of apple slices. Technically, it should’ve been 56 wedges (7x8=56) but 1 fell on the floor and 1 fell in my mouth so I ended up with 54 wedges.

Next, I cut into that lemon and wrung the juice out of it. I also cut off a couple large strips of lemon peel (I highly recommend going with large strips cuz those little buggers are hard to find after the apples are cooked).

Note: don’t look at the above picture too long, you might start going cross-eyed! (Sorry about the blur.)

So, I put the lemon juice, lemon peel, cinnamon (I sprinkled some in cuz I didn’t have any sticks), brown sugar, white sugar, water and salt in my pot and heated it together a bit.

Then I threw in the apples and covered it all with a lid.

While that was cooking I washed my brand-spankin-new jars & lids!

After 30 minutes this is what my apple concoction looked like:

I mashed it up and started filling jars. And since I’d forgotten to take a picture before I started filling jars (I’m new to this, guys) I took a picture just before I filled the last jar.

As you can see, I left it kinda chunky. I thought it might be fun. And it turns out I like it kinda chunky.

So, after filling jars, and jars, I ended up with 4.5 jars of applesauce. Apparently I didn’t need to wash all 12 of my brank-spankin-new jars. Hmmm, note to self, triple the recipe next time!

Moving on, I borrowed my mom’s canner, filled the bottom with water, and placed my 4 precious jars of deliciousness on it. (The .5 jar just went straight into the fridge.)

Then I started a fire underneath it and put the top on.

Once the steam started coming out of the holes on the canner I set the timer for 25 minutes.

And abra-cadabra, the finished product:

I let those puppies cool overnight (they were smokin hot, like a baked potato, only hotter) and stored them safely in my cold storage room. I feel so domestic!

PS. Don’t look too closely at all my pictures. I tried to crop them in close so that you wouldn’t see all the dirty dishes laying around. Not that I ever have dirty dishes laying around!