Little Ms. Domestique

I finished quilting a Halloween quilt last night and wanted to get the binding on today, but so far, no luck! What have I been doing instead?

Well, this morning I did a whirlwind job of cleaning my house. I think I broke all known land speed records. Admittedly, with us gone for a few days, it wasn't too bad, but then dust is dust, and it waits for no man.

So, that done, I got my shopping list in order and did my grocery shopping. Once I got the groceries put away, I figured I'd start on my apple butter, chicken soup, and potato leek soup. In between, I'd make my binding. Of course, you already KNOW that didn't happen!

So I got the apple butter started--which starts off with boiling down apple cider and then adding a bunch of quartered apples. While those were cooking, I thought it would be a good time to catch up on everyone's blogs--I'm happy to say that I'm now caught up! Even if I didn't leave comments on each and every blog, I DID read them.

But here's a tip. Actually a couple tips.

1. Don't read blogs while cooking apples. Why? This is what happens:



2. Don't clean house before making apple butter. Why? See above.

And that photo doesn't even show the part where it boiled all down the front of the stove!

So, once the apples are all cooked, you press the whole mess though a strainer to get rid of the peels, seeds, etc. What a pain! After that, you put all the "pulp" back into a pot and add a bunch of sugar and spices and cook it for two hours, stirring almost constantly. WHAT? No way! Okay, so I cheated and didn't stir almost constantly. What I pretty much did was read a blog, go out and stir, read another blog, go out and stir. That went pretty well for the first hour or so, but then--

Well, read tip number 2 above. See what happened?

It's like making spaghetti sauce! It bubbles and bursts all over the place! Okay, so what's next? The directions say to cook it until it "sheets." I've made candy before and I'm familiar with sheeting, but this stuff is a much coarser texture than candy. I figured, though, that when it got to the "sheeting" point, I'd know. Eventually I got tired of testing it to see if I would consider it to be sheeting, so I just filled the jars I sterilized--nine of them. Bad news! Nine jars were filled and about two thirds of the apple butter is still in the pot. Needless to say, I'm sterilizing more jars. I'll be known as the apple butter queen! Everyone I know will be getting apple butter for Christmas! Well, unless that sheeting thing was important and I didn't wait long enough. In which case, I'll be known as the apple butter jester.

Oh, and those two soups? Nope, they're not done either. The chicken soup is about half done but I need to go cook some veggies in the broth and finish that up. The other soup, potato leek, will have to wait. And that binding? Well, maybe I'll get around to that once I clean my kitchen again.

From now on, I'm just BUYING apple butter. Except I won't need to for maybe ten years. I wonder if it's just like child birth--you forget the pain after awhile?