Vacation: Day Five: Apples: Sauce, Butter, and Rings

That's right, you guessed it, this day of "vacation" was all about making stuff with all those apples we picked! It was not a very restful day - in fact we worked from dawn til beyond dusk - but it was great fun!

Stirring, stirring, stirring  . . . and smiling!

We made and canned smooth and chunky applesauce, apple butter (yum!!), and dried apple rings. Oh, my, I don't believe I've even tasted applesauce before in my life that was as good as the sauce Mum, Michele, and I made!

I seem to always can on sunny days because I always get to take a
gorgeous picture of something freshly canned glowing in the sunshine!

And the apple rings are like heaven! Now, I was a little skeptical about the apple butter - I've never liked it - but I really felt like we should make some. Total convert! I LOVE APPLE BUTTER - at least this apple butter! It's so amazing! We were exhausted after canning all day, so we ordered a pizza and each spread apple butter on the crust - that's how good it is!

The "fruit" of our labor!

Short Addendum to Vacation Day Three: Rhode Island

As I mentioned yesterday, we were pretty obsessed with finding the Rhode Island Greenings during our apple picking venture. Well, since my dad's side of the family is from Rhode Island, I feel a particular connection to that apple - though last weekend was the first time I'd ever heard of it. Though we didn't find the apple, I did find out some interesting bits about it and about RI in general:

The oh so sought after RI Greening 

• The Rhode Island Greening was the first named apple in America and is the official state fruit of Rhode Island.
• Greenings are the perfect apple to make apple slumps with - I have no idea what an apple slump is, but if we'd found some Greenings, I certainly would have made a slump or two.
• Rhode Island's official state name is The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is the longest official name of any US State - which is very funny because Rhode Island is the smallest state!
• Rhode Island was the first of the 13 colonies to declare independence from Britian and the last to ratify the US constitution.