Apple Butter

Three Saturday’s ago I went to our friends Pat and Valerie for their annual apple butter day.  It’s a local tradition that we have gladly glommed on to.

Great fun and fellowship abounded.

At the start, apple chips are just dumped into the copper cauldron and stirred with a canoe paddle.

There is a lot of standing around while we watch the person with the paddle.  This is where the tall tales and gripes about taxes emerge.

As it cooks down more apple chips are added and the stirring switches to a custom designed stirring paddle.

Hours later it is all cooked down and ready for adding the spices and sugar.  Occasionally they make a batch of sugar free apple butter, that is the stuff we like.  But this was a sugared batch.

Once that is all cooked and stirred some more, Pat conducts an “all finished” viscosity test by depositing a dollop on the underside of a sauce pan.  Too runny?  Cook some more.  When it is ready it gets canned in jars.

At this point my job was to carry the cases of still-hot jars into the sugar house for later labeling and, eventually, selling.

The big highlight is that after all the work is done, Pat’s sister breaks out the bin of fresh, still-warm biscuits we use to scrape the residue out the cauldron.  The moaning of delight commenced.

Mmmm, mmmm, mmm.