Little Susie Homemaker

Tag: apple butter

  • Fall 2025

    November has started in the PNW in the typical dark and rainy fashion. But that just means, indoor projects and hobbies!

    I have continued to work on getting the free fruit processed. The Liberty apples are applesauce, canned and stored on a shelf in the garage.

    Garage shelf with applesauce as well as freeze dried meats and broth. And cool storage for onions & potatoes

    The cider apples are pending processing. Once I finished that box, I’m done with this batch of fruit. These will get sliced and either freeze-dried or frozen.

    The pears were diced and freeze-dried. And also turned into vanilla pear butter. I have it in the fridge and need to water bath can it so it will store well.

    The hubby & I cleared out the den closet and rearranged and added a couple of new shelves. It’s not finished yet, but so far it has drastically helped the storage ability of that closet! I look forward to filling it with more goodies.

    New shelves in den closet with a lot more room to expand! I have it sorted by fruits, vegetables and ready-to-eat meals. Broths are in the kitchen cupboards and in the garage. And meats are in the garage.

    One great thing about cleaning out that closet was getting all of the freeze-dried food organized. We have quite a bit of fruit and vegetables.

    I was able to see how many pre-made meals we have available. I’ll need to work on getting more ready for next summer’s backpacking adventures!

    If you’ve ever thought about getting a freeze-dryer yourself, Harvest Right is running their Black Friday sale *during the month of November. Check it out! All freezer-dryers are discounted this month!

    old-style Small Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

    One project I’ll be working on after finding some old seat covers from the RV is to repurpose those to make a cover for the freeze-dryer. Since I have it in the garage, we always have to remember to throw a tarp or a towel over it when my husband is doing anything in the garage that will make a lot of dust.

    The jam shelf is also filling up this fall. We don’t eat a ton of jam so I’m finding that if I make small batches every other year, that gives us plenty.

    Apple butter, quince jam, ‘raspbarb’ (raspberry/rhubarb) jam and tayberry jam

    One thing I plan on doing each spring is to turn any leftover frozen berries into jam. Once the berries start coming in, I need room in the freezer for the fresh ones so will clear out the previous seasons.

    And the final piece of news from the last few weeks, I have started listing my embroidered tea towels in an Etsy shop. (https://spfled1016.etsy.com) Go check it out.

    These are customizable and I can make them in a day or less. They make wonderful gifts (holidays, showers, weddings, house warmings, etc.)

    I hope your autumn is going well and you’re looking forward to Thanksgiving! I’m grateful that you’re reading my blog! Thanks!!

    (*this is an affiliate link which means I’ll make a % of any sales that result from you clicking through my link)

  • Fall Harvest

    Fall has arrived and so has the harvest to be put up!

    I posted in a local FB group that if anyone had fruit trees that needed picking, I was available. I got two offers to get fruit FOR FREE!!!

    One lady had apple trees and I came home with 4 boxes! I overestimated my energy level to process all of those apples. (It didn’t help that by the time the weekend was over, I had a pretty nasty cold for a couple of days.) I gave one of the boxes to a family at my church.

    With the apples, I have made a double batch of apple butter, 4 quarts of applesauce (so far) and freeze-dried 2 trays (so far) of apple slices.

    I have another batch of applesauce started and will finish the box of the red (Liberty) apples making those into sauce. When I cook them down, I run them through an old-fashioned sieve and end up with a lovely pink sauce because of the red skin. My husband has been enjoying eating what’s leftover in the sieve.

    My applesauce is literally just cooked down apples. I don’t add anything to it. I prefer unsweetened and these apples are so sweet, I definitely don’t need to add anything to them.

    Another lady had an Asian pear tree that was ripe. Unfortunately, that one ended up being too tall to get much, but I did come home with 3/4 of a box of pears.

    When I got home that afternoon, I made some ginger pear muffins from the Trim Healthy Mama membership site. They’re delicious!

    I plan on making a batch of pear jam and then freeze-drying the rest of them. I like pears as snacks when we’re hiking but then can easily rehydrate them for baking.

    We also harvested the quince from the quince tree. My husband planted the tree as a novelty in the backyard last year and there was 1 quince. This year, we picked 13 for just under 9 lbs. of fruit.

    I’ve had to look up quite a bit on quince to know what to do with them. These are Portugal Quince, and they look like a large pear. They can be eaten raw but are quite hard and very tart. But when they are cooked, they sweeten up and have an almost tropical scent.

    Unfortunately, when I cut the first one open (and each one so far since) they’re brown on the inside. I have a message to the nursery we bought it from to see what they think.

    UPDATE: I heard back from the nursery and they confirmed they were overripe. Next year, we’ll pick them as soon as we can smell them while on the tree.

    But, we did bake the first one and my husband ate it. I don’t think it had been cooked quite long enough as it was still pretty hard. And today, I’m cooking down 3 of them to try quince jam.

    The best way I can describe what quince tastes like is a peach/pineapple cross. It’s good, just unusual. I believe I cooked down enough for 1 jar of jam. We’ll see what happens!

    UPDATE: The finished jam has a delightful flavor that I think is a peach/pineapple mix, my future SIL said he thought it tasted like pear. My husband and stepdaughter both said mango. So, pick your fruit flavor, but it’s a really bright flavor for a fall fruit. I like it!

    The weekend will tell how much of this processing gets finished. Happy Fall!