How 'Bout Them Apples?

This weekend, I bought my first sewing machine. I figure, if I’m going to make a quilt (more on that goal here: link to post), now is as good a time as any to get started. Then, I bought materials to make a quilt. And then I sat down at my sewing machine and learned how to thread it, put in some practice fabric (to make a pincushion), and started sewing. Or, should I say, attempted to start sewing. It didn’t turn out very well.

I can assure you that it isn't supposed to look like this.

So, I think I’m going to get sewing lessons, somewhere. I’m looking into it further, but I’m going to find a fabric store around that gives sewing lessons because what happened above, should not happen again. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but I’m looking forward to actually being able to sew in a straight line. In the meantime, I did make a delicious apple “butter” this weekend. It was seriously fantastic and I made it with apples from when we went apple picking on my birthday weekend. This was a crockpot recipe I got from Gina’s Skinny Recipes here and it turned out really well. The recipe called for simmering in the crockpot for a total of 10 hours, broken into 1 10-hour segment and 1 2-hour segment. I decided it would be easiest to do this while I was asleep and so I started preparing this at about 10:30 on Saturday evening. Here’s what the preparation involved:

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs (6 large) apples, peeled, cored, finely chopped

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp allspice

1/8 tsp nutmeg

 By far, the most time consuming part of this preparation was peeling and finely chopping the 6 large apples – it took about 35 minutes in total.  I’m not used to chopping apples though, so maybe someone with better chopping skills wouldn’t take that long.

 I then placed the chopped apples into the crockpot.  Next, I added the sugars (white and light brown), ground cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg into the crockpot with the apples.

I set the crockpot to cook for 10 hours on high and covered it. The recipe called for occasional stirring, but I didn’t stir it that often and it turned out well. I did set my alarm to wake up at 5 am (yes, I went back to sleep after – I’m not that crazy) to make sure the crockpot hadn’t set on fire and to give it a halfway through stirring.

At 9:30 am, I moved the contents from the crockpot to a blender, then to a bowl between blending batches, and then put it all back into the crockpot and cooked for 2 more hours on high, uncovered this time.  It sort of looks like chili, but I promise that those are apples.  

Finally, I put it in 2 jars and put it into the refrigerator to store.

And it’s really yummy. It is great on toast and on top of oatmeal. And the best part? It made the entire apartment smell like cinnamon and apples. I woke up the smell and stayed throughout the day. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday!

So, while I may not be able to use a sewing machine, I can make a mean apple butter. Anyone else using their crockpot to make delicious apple treats? Do you hate chopping apples too? If any of you have found a way to stop the juices from the apple getting everywhere when you’re chopping, I’d love to hear about it!