There are a few things that Missouri and Kentucky have over Texas and one is apples!  They may grow somewhere in Texas but so far, I haven’t seen any apple orchards around here.  In Kentucky, less than 3 miles from our house was Reid’s Orchard.  We moved to Kentucky on October 15 and that was the weekend of Reid’s Apple Festival.  There were cars everywhere along the highway.  The place was packed and we couldn’t figure it out but the next year, we attended the Apple Festival and never missed a year while we were there.  It came to symbolize the beginning of Fall with the cool, crisp air and the sweet, crunchy apples, as well as the fantastic homemade cider.  Reid’s has so many varieties of apples and I loved buying them by the bushel and making all kinds of apple products to can and enjoy throughout the year.

In Missouri, we had an apple orchard about 10 miles from us.  The folks were old . . the old man had planted the orchard when he was young, and then his son had improved it and made it really nice.  Then the son got sick and passed away, the old folks took it back over and it was way too much work for them so it was going downhill but they still had decent apples.  I begged Vince to approach them and see if they would sell the place and we could fix it back up again, maybe have a bed and breakfast out there, but he had no interest in it and I guess it’s a good thing . . since we no longer live there.

I do miss fresh apples.  Yesterday while at Wal-Mart, they had bags of little red apples for $2.99.  I want to make spiced apple rings but need a hard, crunchy apple for that.  I usually use Granny Smith but one year mom found some hard little Red Delicious apples and they made the best rings I’ve ever had.  When I saw those apples at Wal-Mart, I was so hoping they would be hard and crunchy and I could make apple rings with them but when I cut into them, they weren’t crunchy at all and I knew they wouldn’t work for the rings. So, I made applesauce.  Who doesn’t love homemade applesauce?  I canned it in half pint jars so we can usually eat one jar in a day and not have to keep it in the fridge.  I love heating up a bit of applesauce and putting it on top of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream.

I didn’t add any sugar . . just a bit of cinnamon, so it has to be a pretty good snack. No preservatives.  Nothing but apples and that bit of cinnamon! Three bags of apples produced 13 half pints of applesauce.  I figure if I buy three more bags, that will mean we have enough applesauce so we can have one jar every two weeks. But, I’d like to put up enough to have one jar a week but who knows if I’ll get that much canning done.  I could put it up in pints but we like it better when it’s first opened and hasn’t been refrigerated.

It’s all I can do to keep myself from opening one of those jars right now and eating it all by myself!