Apple Butter!

Well, we did it again! We made our family apple butter last Saturday. This year we decided to scale down though and we only made 3 dozen instead of 6 dozen jars. :) It felt fairly manageable but it was still a crazy day trying to juggle Addy and apple butter.

Luckily part of the time we were making the apple butter, it was lunch time so Addy was confined to her high-chair and she could see all the activity in the kitchen. She seemed to like the front row seat.

Really, Brad does most of the work in the process. :) I get it ready, make sure all the parts are moving smoothly and he cooks, purees, stirs and fills jars. I just do the boiling water bath and peel all the apples ahead of time. This year it was great to only do 16lbs of apples.

Addy takes after her Daddy so all day long she wanted to go outside. She has really gotten into walks and just sitting on the sidewalk playing with leaves and sticks. Seriously, she can do this for a LONG time! During apple butter making, Addy pounded on the storm door, pointed to outside and played with her ball. She was a good sport and we made up for it by trick-or-treating with her Saturday night (more on that later).

Here's the end of our first batch. I actually forgot to take a picture of the finished project because Addy was napping and we ended up crashing on the couch as soon as the kitchen was clean!

Then it was time for the big Halloween event (after Brad got a wild hair to make chicken and dumplings from a cook's illustrated recipe. . . ).