I Can Can!

My hippie aspirations began in high school, grown out of an admiration for the few hippie kids in my prep school world and their promise of acceptance for weird kids like me. The hippie kids were nice, you see, down for dance parties and staring up at stars while we lay on our backs in backroad fields. They liked music and weed and they shared in my questioning of the norms of our insulated lives. I never quite became a hippie, though, never quite fit in just right in any group. But the kindnesses those kids showed me at the height of my awkward years–the kindnesses they have continued to show me as we’ve grown into adults and largely stemmed away from each other–have always stuck with me. I’ve carried a bit of hippie in my heart, I guess, a sliver of self that leans towards earth and relishes sun. It’s this sliver that’s left me itching to can, that propelled my hands forward to grab ten pounds of apples at the grocery this weekend when they were local and organic and only 89 cents a pound.

I mean, 89 cents you guys. That NEVER happens around here. And though I’ve been making applesauce ever since Max was born, it’s never really saved us any money. It has afforded us organic fruit, though, from local farms, and nothing but apples and cinnamon going down our throats. It’s been worth it, for sure, but I’ve only ever made small batches because the labor of peeling apples and such for virtually no savings just never inspires me to make epic amounts of sauce. Until now. 89 cents meant we were grabbing canning lids on our way to the check out. It also meant that John and Maxine were forced to spend their afternoon hunched over the kitchen sink, washing and peeling apples for me to slice and toss into our two biggest pots. A cinnamon stick or two was added to each pot and an inch of water drizzled down to the bottom. A fold of wax paper on top and some periodic stirring finished the applesauce off.

I should admit that I neglected to make sure our stock pot was big enough to can in. I mean, we don’t have any special canning equipment or anything. I’m sure it’s useful and all, but I just can’t wrap my mind around buying special equipment to store food the way my great great grandmother did. You know? The math just doesn’t add up for me. I was determined, though, and after giving myself a bit of a pep talk, I poured the cooled applesauce into the cooled sanitized jars and then set them into 140 F water (thanks to the candy thermometer my mom gave me of her dad’s), bringing the water to a slow boil for 15 minutes before removing the jars to our butcher block to sit without touching each other overnight. I tapped each lid this morning and none of them gave, meaning perfect seals all around. And now when I open our pantry I see a row of jars filled with applesauce. In total we got 8 jars out of 10 pounds of apples, meaning we made 8 jars of applesauce–good, organic, local, cinnamon-y applesauce–for less than ten dollars.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is what we-who-carry-hippie-bits-in-our-hearts call a VICTORY!

PS: I promise to tell you if we get botulism. Really, I do.