Puttin’ Up Apples to Freeze

Well, we bought a bushel of Arkansas Black apples for Mom and Dad when we visited the mountains last week.

After a few days of recuperating from vacation, I went to their house so we could put them up.

A full bushel box of apples could look a little daunting, but we made pretty quick work of it.
 

 

 

Mom couldn’t see into the box from where she was sitting and asked a time or two if we were about done. I told her that maybe Jesus would make our bushel of apples bottomless like he did with the loaves of bread and fishes for the multitude. I think she was okay with just a regular bushel.
We all peeled, cored, and sliced the apples. Then we tossed them into a container with lemon water in it. Our lemon water was getting full of apple slices so we needed to get them ready for the freezer so we could put more apple slices into our lemoned water. 

 

 

Mom and Dad had gotten one of those vacuum sealer things at Costco. Dad gave me the instructions and asked me to figure it out so we could package what we had already.
 

Fortunately, the instructions were pretty straightforward and it was easy to use.

I scooped out apple slices to drain so I could package them. After they drained well, I put them into bags and used the vacuum and seal machine to seal them up beautifully! 

 

 

Before we had this new gadget, we just put the apples into quart freezer bags, trying to get out as much air as possible, before zipping them. We couldn’t get much air out but that vacuum sure did a great job!!

I continued packaging while Dad and Mom kept peeling, coring, and slicing. 

 

I think that it took us less than three hours and we ended up with 24 “quarts” of apples to freeze and pull out and fry at a later date!

 

Tucked away in the freezer.

After getting the apples ready for the freezer, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner of white beans, diced onion, cornbread, and well lemoned iced tea!

Dad and Mom sure know how to feed a girl!