Today/This Week

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Here is our pie!  It was made by the girls. We used the canned apple pie filling from a few months ago. I hear that it wasn't as tasty as Grandma Dora's, but it was still an apple pie!  You can never go wrong with an apple pie! 

It had a tad bit of a jelly texture. I'm not sure if it was after cooling or if it was because of the way I processed the filling. Any suggestions? 

Andy's "turkey" is stuffed and ready for the oven!

Here's the "turkey" dressed and ready to eat! Believe it or not everyone who wanted a piece was able to get one! It looked and tasted just as yummy as the real one! 

Andy has decided to make some "poor man" geese decoys out of cardboard. They're not ready just yet, but they are looking good so far! 

Apple pie in a can.

Thought I would listen to Granmo when she suggested I can apple pie filling. I thought it sounded way too good to be true- pour, heat, and serve! Too tasty and delicious to be healthy that's for sure! Can't wait to try it out. Thank you Granmo! 

Grape Juice

We tried our hand at grape juice. It was before I bought the cheese cloth. Haha 

We'll see how it goes when we crack open these quarts. It might take a LOT of Sprite to cover the pulpy taste. Cross your fingers! 

This week

I know I've slacked off on the photo journal this week. It's been busy and I'm exhausted. I know this is cheating, but I'm doing it anyway! 

Here are a few pictures of our fun jelly making session today. We used a couple of grocery sacks full of Grandpa and Grandma Grape's (Smith's) grapes. It is such a tasty and perfectly sweet jelly. It was so delicious Evan was caught stealing spoonfuls! 

Canning fun

I decided to try again with some canning. The tomato sauce didn't seal properly but it didn't leak all over the water bath either.  It wasn't until I took it out to let it sit that it started to ooze out. Andy noticed the ring was slightly bent and after removing it we noticed the seal had the same bend. So that was a bust. 

The second attempt was to use the Oscar carcass to brew up some ever useful pints of chicken stock. It yielded five pints.  I can't wait to use it in a recipe!  

I also dried tomatoes to use in ketchup and I dried the skins (of the five pounds of tomatoes used for the tomato sauce) to make a powder. I can add the powder to water to make fresh paste anytime I need some!