spring-like

Yes I like spring, but when do you know it's here and winter's gone? It's hard to tell sometimes, and when you think the season has changed it flips back.

Some of the signs of spring are that the weather is very changeable, this weekend was an fine example of that -  lovely Saturday, crap Sunday! Blossoms are starting to appear. Lambs are being born. The pollen is here, my sinuses are in overdrive. The beach was covered in yellow, I've never seen that phenomenon before.

 And just to confuse you we preserved some Granny Smith apples we were given a week ago. They are great keepers, they were probably picked 5 months ago - but I think they're close to the end by the smell that was coming out of the box! My mum was a "preserver-extraordinaire!" She would bottle enough fruit so that we could open a jar a day! I cannot compete, it's quite disheartening when one large pot only produced 4 jars. We have not finished the box, we need to keep on with the preserving*.

*preserving = bottling, canning of fruit in jars for future use.

The jars we use in NZ are called Agee jars, and the metal lids on the top are called Perfit Seals, and the metal ring is a band. The way I make stewed apple is the way my mum did it. Fruit is peeled and sliced, thankfully we have a nifty gadget to help do this. The fruit is stewed by slowly boiling, with just enough water to stop them sticking, and no sugar is added. Jars are washed in hot soapy water, then placed in an oven at 100 degrees C. Seals are put in a small pot and boiling water poured over them. When the fruit is soft and mushy fill a hot jar almost to the top, then using tongs take a seal and place on the jar making sure there is no fruit around the rim, then tightly screw on a band. The next day check that the seals have worked, they should be slightly sunken, if not the fruit will need to be kept in fridge and eaten quickly. Remove the bands and put jars in cupboard to have stewed apple whenever required. Around here we use it for apple crumbles and apple sauce when we have roast pork.

I'd be interested to know how others preserve apples in other parts of the world.

After that long and rambling post I'm linking up with Cathy at {tinniegirl}