Apple Butter

I have had this apple butter recipe for a while now. It comes from the Gooseberry Patch Slow Cooking cookbooklet. When we lived in WA I started canning. I grew lots of tomatoes and Reese's brother had some property down the street where I grew a bigger garden and used a lot of the fruit from his trees for canning. I canned pasta sauce, salsa, applesauce, apple jelly, pears, pear honey, and pickles. I miss canning. I look back fondly on those days when Lane was just a little guy and I would pull him in the wagon over to Uncle Jo's to harvest what we had grown. And his excitement when he would find red tomatoes on our plants at home. Then when he would go to bed at night I would start canning. I would stay up until midnight sometimes, the kitchen would be steaming from the boiling canner. It was so fulfilling to get done and here the "ping" of the lids sealing as I was cleaning up. Some people probably think I am weird (well those of you who know me well enough know that I am in fact weird). I just think that maybe I was born in the wrong decade or century for that matter :)

To get back to my apple butter....I decided this would be a great way to can something without having a garden or fruit trees. I could just buy 4 lbs of apples at the store. It's a crockpot recipe so the stove didn't need to be on for a long time. I started in the morning and by the time I went to bed that night I had 4 jars of apple butter.

The recipe calls for ground cloves which I didn't have, so I just put 15 whole cloves in and fished them out when I was done. Next time I will buy ground cloves...
From whole Granny Smith apples....
to a cooked, deep brown about 10 hours later. It says to use a food mill to separate the pulp and the solids. I pushed it through a colander, picked out the peels and mashed it up by hand. Next time I will buy a food mill.....
Then I returned the juice and pulp to the crock pot along with the sugar and spices. To cook for another hour. I would have liked it to turn out a bit thicker, so next time I might put it on the stove and simmer it for an hour instead of it just on high in the crock pot.
Ahhhh. The fruits of my labor. I had to cut out some apple images from my new Country Life cricut cartridge for the picture. I am strange.
The apple butter is very yummy on an english muffin with peanut butter. I think it would also be awesome warmed up to use instead of syrup for pancakes or french toast.

Harvest Apple Butter

4 lbs apples, cored and quartered 1 tsp ground cloves

1 cup apple cider 1/2 tsp allspice

2 1/2 cups sugar 4 1/2-pint canning jars and lids, sterilized

1 tsp cinnamon

Place apples and cider into a slow cooker; heat on high setting for 10 hours. Sift through a food mill; return pulp to slow cooker, discarding solids. Add remaniing ingredients; stif to mix. Heat, uncovered for one house; fill sterilized pint jars to within 1/4 inch from the top. Wipe rims and secure lids. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Makes 4 jars.

On another note, I am 29 weeks pregnant. I have been taking a belly shot every 4 weeks, so at 28 weeks I was supposed to take one and never did. Here is my belly shot, one week late.

Lane's First Day of School

Here is Lane's (second) first day of Kindergarten picture. He had a great day. He is excited about his classroom, mainly because they have a lizard and a turtle! They also have some awesome legos that he was really excited to play with. Yesterday I was walking to pick him up and saw his class walking in a line out of the classroom. I spotted Lane right away with his white blonde head sticking out a head taller than all the other kids! Yes, he looks a little "ginormous" next to some of his classmates, but I am confident that this is right where he needs to be.

Now the question is how did I do on Lane's first day? His being at school isn't the hard part, we've done that before. Me being home by myself isn't really the hard part either, I am pretty used to that. The hard part is leaving that school with nothing in my arms, no stroller to push. We went to his orientation on Tuesday, just like we did last year. Last year I had Case in the Baby Bjorn, he was just 3 weeks old. Last year on the first day of school, I pushed Case in the stroller while Lane walked beside it (the picture below has the wheel of the stroller in the left hand corner).

Everything is different now. I have prepared for this, I knew this day was coming, and soon I will have another baby to push in the stroller to school. But my heart aches that I don't have my one year old little Case in the stroller.

I will be honest, it's hard not to compare myself to others. I know that is fruitless, but the sinful, human "me" does it anyway. I watch all of these families with all their kids. Mom's who seem like their biggest problem today is to just find a minute alone while their little one's nap. While I long for a little one year old who won't nap or who is teething, or who wakes up during the night, I would take that over this any day. Why was I the one whose baby died of SIDS? I love my kids and take care of them just as much or more as they do, how is it that my child had to die? Why was our family a statistic? But God keeps reminding me that He has a plan and my life is this way for a reason. On Aug 12th, 7 months after Case went to heaven, I read these words in Jesus Calling:

Do not compare yourself with others, who seem to skip along their life-paths with ease. Their journeys have been different from yours, and I have gifted them with abundant energy. I have gifted you with fragility, providing opportunities for your spirit to blossom in My Presence. Accept this gift as a sacred treasure: delicate, yet glowing with brilliant Light. Rather than struggling to disguise or deny your weakness, allow Me to bless you richly through it.

It's already happened, this is my life, I can't change it. I have no choice but to accept it and allow God to bless me through it.

Knitting!

Everyone always says how much fun girls are to shop for. That is true and I am sure I will get sucked in in no time. But for now, I just can't seem to stop making things for her. I am in luck because she will be in 0-3 and 3-6 months during the winter months so I get to spend less on yarn and the little sweaters get done faster.

This is my first baby sweater. It was super easy and I got it done in like 8 days. I had some leftover yarn and knit a matching hat.
This sweater was really easy after I had completed the first one. They are similar to make but different. And the matching hat...I LOVE!
The flower just buttons on so I will be making some other colored flowers to match a bunch of different outfits. I may not accessorize much, but this little girl will!

I have done some serious nesting since I got back. I loved my time up there, but I kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do when I got back. I have organized two closets, one being a large walk in storage closet! I have organized a few cupboards and decluttered some areas of the house. I also have been working on some fabric projects. And when I am not doing those things I am laying on the couch with my feet up! I have nested so much that when I went to bring Lane's registration paperwork for Kindergarten, I had shredded all my recent utility bills and had no proof of residency! Thankfully I know the lady in the office and told her how "crazy" I've been, she understood. I guess it could be worse, I could have not been able to find the bills in all my clutter.... Needless to say, I am finally being a more productive person. To me that is so refreshing, it drives me crazy to not get things done, and finally I am.

Random Blogging

After spending two months in WA, we are back! I am happy to be in our own home again and looking forward to getting Lane on a schedule for school. Our time up there was great, lots of time with family and friends, which was awesome! But we were busy, it's time now to settle into a routine again. I've been seeing my life this year in chapters. Sounds weird but I keep thinking of the next chapter in my life. I felt like being in WA would be a chapter for me, one of healing and being around family. Now that I am back we are starting a new chapter, one I am really looking forward to. Lane going back to school will be good for all of us, he needs the routine and I need the time at home to myself before the baby comes. I feel like with every "chapter" God has continued to work in me. I can't believe the difference in me from the time I found out I was pregnant until now. My mind, my fears, have calmed down a lot, not fully, but every little bit helps. I feel ready to do things I didn't know if I'd be ready to do. I feel a bit more like me, and a little normalcy in all of this goes a long way. I am different, I've accepted that, not only have I had to grieve the death of my child, I have also had to grieve my old self and how our family once was. The new isn't bad, but it's different, forever changed.

Here are some pictures that I didn't get to share while I was up there.

Siblings: in birth order from youngest to oldest, there's me smack dab in the middle, not a bad place to be. These girls and guys are my faves!
My 24 week picture. Although I am now almost 27 weeks. :)

Love this picture of Lane on the 4th of July. This was the first year he got to enjoy fire crackers. We've always watched the big one's but we aren't allowed to light them off ourselves in S. California, so this was a highlight! We got to watch the show out at my aunt and uncle's in Sandy Point. The sunset was awesome as you can see.

And in honor of another new chapter, I wanted to post a recipe. Taking pictures of food and posting a recipe reminds me of "me." The bakery at the grocery store I was staying near by had some wonderful macaroons that had chocolate all over the bottom of them. I saw this recipe on Mennonite Girls Can Cook (linked on my blog) and had to make the chocolate version for myself.

Coconut Macaroons

3 cups angel flaked coconut

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 can sweetened condensed milk

2 tsp vanilla

Some semisweet chocolate chips for melting. I probably melted a 1/2 cup and added a little shortening to it (less than 1 tsp).

Preheat oven to 325. Combine coconut, flour and salt. Stir in milk and vanilla. Drop 1 Tbsp full onto greased baking pan. Bake for 18 min or until golden.

Once cooled, spread melted chocolate all over the bottom and sit upside down to harden.