Canning apple butter!

I haven't canned anything this year.

Pregnancy, new baby, and new house has made canning difficult.

Even when we tried to go strawberry picking this summer Miriam screamed her head off and it started raining on us.  After that we have been feeling pretty defeated about gathering hoards of produce.  It just hasn't been the year for that.

And, now our canning supplies are all across the lawn in our little storage shed. So it is even more of an ordeal to can things.

So I haven't canned anything this year- until now.

Thursday I took a stick and a wagon and knocked the last of the apples from the apple trees in our back yard. They were not pretty apples, but I got about 20lbs of them.  Since we have applesauce from last fall still on the shelf (yup over a year ago we went with Liz and Mike and their embryo!) I decided to go for apple butter.  Also, we are trying to do super cheap Christmas this year and homemade jams and such make great gifts.

 So we boiled the apples down and put them through a ricer.

 I made two batches. One regular with standard spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, and another with cardamom.

 Someone was watching us!

 Sterilized jars were awaiting with apprehension.  But, actually I didn't have enough small jars.  We are using so many of them to store spices that I ran out.

But alas, the apple butter is made. And, oh boy, it is yummy. I just had some with toast and then of course I had them with tortillia chips!