#I don't have a spice grinder but it all gets blended in the end anyways

[queerhawkeyes]

I made this soup yesterday and it was soooooo good. I'm not usually a fan of carrot soups but this made me a believer. I left out the tamari and sesame oil but otherwise followed the recipe. it uses ingredients I always have on hand which is a bonus.

[jasper-crow]

I think some of y'all missed the apple butter update, but that did end up going well 💙

Guess I'll drop the recipe as a way of an bonus

Oh and if any of these sorts of posts interest you I've got them all tagged under #lesbian island life on my profile.

Ingredients:

13.5 pounds peeled and cored apples from wherever, the more wasps you have to fight for them the better.

6 and 1/8th cups sugar. No I didn't use a measuring cup for the 1/8th, I'm just guessing the extra I tossed in.

Spices of your choice, I used: cloves, nutmeg, allspice, juniper berry, cinnamon, and cardamom

Like idk, 4-6 cups of water? It's to make it easier to boil down before blending, but honestly you gotta boil most of it off anyways so 🤷‍♀️ your milage may vary.

You should probably can this stuff, I filled up 14 pint jars. If you haven't canned before just get the damn things at the store (the big ones that say Ball on the side) and drop them into boiling water for 15-20 minutes. It'll be fine, it's not hard.

Steps:

Get someone else to peel and core the apples. Or spend 3-4 hours of your own time doing it as inefficiencently as possible with a hand peeler and chopping out the cores with a knife.

Think to yourself "Well all these peels are cores are such a waste to throw out!"

Go make apple cider on the side.

Dice up apples

Realize that 13.5 pounds of apples is a lot of fucking apples and you've filled your 1.5 gallon stock pot.

Split some of them off for now into anything else you have to hand

Add water to pot and stick it on your hottest burner and hope for the best

Once again curse your lack of gas stove but understand that your mortal nemesis the electric stove is better for the environment. Pout about this as the water starts to boil

Measure out sugar, use coconut sugar for first cup and a half because it was in your pantry and you figure it'll taste good.

Clean out wife's coffee grinder so you may once again commandeer it for spice grinding

Add whole cloves, cardamom pods, allspice berries, juniper berries, and the little fragments of cinnamon stick you have left to the grinder along with a whole nutmeg... Berry? Nut? Idk a whole nutmeg thing.

Realize after grinding that the nutmeg isn't breading down

Bust it with mortal and pestle

Read and find it's suppose to be gratted. Huh

Put pieces back in grinder, mom didn't raise a quiter. Also add more cinnamon because there isn't enough.

Realize apples are starting to break down, add in remaining apples. Feel very self satisfied with how this is going.

Remember you haven't eaten since 8am and it is now 4:30pm

Make a burger and eat it.

Grab trusty potato masher and start to try and destroy apples.

Curse your potato masher for it's sudden yet inevitable betrayal as it separates from it's terrible plastic handle and disappears into a sea of bubbling apple mash.

Decide you have a better solution to this whole affair and get out your second stock pot. In small batches use a large ladle to move apple mash into blender, blend till smooth, then pour apple slurry into large stock pot.

Marvel upon your newly smoothed apple sauce and think to yourself "I should probably get an immersion blender"

Add in spices and sugar, mix well by stirring.

Turn heat up till you can get a light boil going, then turn heat down to low-medium (like a 2-3 out of 10) and let the whole mixture start to bubble.

You should probably stir this so it doesn't burn. But I didn't 🤷‍♀️ so idk maybe don't trust me 😅

Get frustrated after about an hour of this when you can tell if it's thick enough yet. Turn heat up slightly and stir aggressively, worried about burning.

Have mixture bubble like a cauldron and splash molten apple liquid onto your hand, handle this as needed.

Notice none of it is burning and slap a lid halfway onto it and turn down the heat back to that low-medium.

Play roughly 3 hours of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Interupted halfway through by your wife jamming her packer down your throat. Enjoy that greatly.

Finally remember that you were cooking, go check on it. Find it to be a beautiful caramel brown color. Can it all, wipe down cans, place on lids, put in water bath, gtf to sleep.

And that's about it. Hope any of you like this or care, but I'm happy to have it work out anyways 💙

Alright y'all, that took way way way too long. But many interruptions, a shower, cleaning the kitchen again, and an hour of my very tiny canning setup later; they are all done!

Look how thick and delicious the apple butter looked when it was all done! I had like a gallon and a half of this liquid gold 🤤

Filling the cans and running my terrible water bath setup was fun as per usual. I really should buy a funnel and a proper canner 😅

But and the end of all of it I've got 14 pint jars of the stuff ready to go! Now to just leave them overnight to cool off and into the pantry they go!

And only another 2 baskets of apples from the first tree and then 4 more trees to go! I'm gonna have to start getting some of these traded out for stuff, I've got far far too many apples!