Some thoughts on homemade applesauce, frugality.

How great homemade applesauce is--and it smells so heavenly when cooking! I have been gleaning the windfall apples from our neighbor's tree.  They usually fall down when disturbed due to squirrels chewing on them, then attract hornets if they lie on the ground and decay.  So I pick them up, cut off the bruises and brown spots, and the cores, and cook them with a small amount of water in a large kettle.   I run the cooked apples through my food processor and the sauce turns out reddish from the peelings.  A little sugar can be added but this batch today was sweet enough.  Sometimes I freeze it in plastic bags--about one cup size as that is easy to thaw in the microwave--or if I have a lots, I can it.

I'm a thrift nut, I suppose.  My favorite kitchen utensil is my red silicone scraper.  I hate to waste leftovers and scrape every last bit into a plastic margarine container for later use.  I also do stuff like cutting bottles of hand lotion in half with a scissors, then use a spoon or knife to put the last 1/2-3/4 inch of lotion into a small bottle so that it isn't wasted.  I think there is about 1/4 c. left in those pump bottles of lotion that would be wasted otherwise.  When a person pays $8 or more for a bottle, that's probably $1 worth.  Another thing I do is to save the last couple of slices of dry bread of every loaf that nobody seems to eat, slice off the crusts, dice into 3/4 inch cubes and freeze it in a Ziploc bag.  When I get enough, I make bread pudding with raisins and apples, eggs, milk, cinnamon and sugar or perhaps make Thanksgiving type stuffing/dressing.  There is something creatively fun about finding a use for things that would normally be thrown away--I am always thinking, "I wonder what use I could find for that?"

I should be going to bed as it is 11:30 PM but will write a bit. I canned more applesauce today. We will never run out! Cooked some more ripe tomatoes too and by tomorrow may have enough more ripening for 7 qts.--a canner full. Picked more windfall apples today too and the other day wild grapes. I must pick beans tomorrow. It seems that my garden's abundance all seems to need to be dealt with at once. I am thankful to God for a problem like that, though!

We are busy calling people to sell tickets to a dinner and speech in Fargo with Thomas Woods and Barry Goldwater Jr. at $50/ticket. We have been trying to sell 10 tickets and then we (The John Birch Society) can qualify to have a free booth there. We have 10 now so are happy that we made the goal. We had to assume we would be able to sell 10 and go ahead with ordering materials etc. for the booth before we knew we had sold the tickets on faith that we would. Woods will be talking about nullification of Obamacare by individual state legislatures which is what we are working toward. His book is called Nullification. This concept can be applied to other unconstitutional federal legislation as well.