What a beautiful mess...: Mrs. B's Apple Butter

Fall is certainly one of my favorite seasons. What's not to love with the crisp cool air filled with amazing smells and the excitement of football!

Speaking of smells... If want to fill your home with the sweet scent of apples and cinnamon without lighting fifty different candles, which I must say I am definitely guilty of having a candle lit in every room, I have just the way to do it!

Crock pot apple butter is my new favorite hobby. It requires about 10 minutes of chopping and peeling apples and then you're done. The best part is that when your home smells delicious and mouth watering you actually get to eat it!

When working in the Emergency Department you run across all types of people and on a very special, rare day you run into one of those patients that just steals your heart. Two days ago I had the pleasure of meeting the most sensational woman, who at 84 years of age is still climbing oak trees, cleaning her own gutters, and picking pears and apples from her own trees. She lives alone and has the sweetest soul and the most amazing stories. She of course has no physician and has a medication list that is super easy to remember. NONE. For privacy purposes, we will call her Mrs. B.

She is the perfect example of a woman who has worked hard every day, loved her family, and lived a full and rich life. We talked about canning and cooking and somehow ended up talking about my desire to learn how to make apple butter. We talked for quite some time about her family and her recipes and she walked me through her process of making apple butter! What a treasured recipe that I will have forever in my mind.

I brought her back yesterday for a recheck and as soon as I walked in the room I could smell them... APPLES!! This amazing, sweet woman brought an entire bag of apples that she hand picked from her own apple tree. This was one of those times in life that I thanked God for having the opportunity to work in a field that allows me to help people. Little does Mrs. B know but she actually helped and taught me more than I could even begin to do for her.

You can tell the God lives deep within the woman's heart and it was such a blessing to cross paths with her. It's crazy how you can come and go in and out of someones life so quickly and never really know how much you impacted them. I'm sure she will never know it but she will be well known in our family... I packaged her butter in mini-jars to share!

Mrs. B's Apple Butter

14 Apples

(I asked what kind of apples to use. Her response, "Whatever falls from the tree.")

Lemon Juice

2 Cups Apple Cider

Cinnamon

Cloves

Nutmeg

Peel, core, and chop apples. Toss around in just enough lemon juice to give a very light coating. Mrs. B said that she used to make her apple butter in a roasting pan. She now uses the new crock pot her daughter bought her. Toss the apples in the crock pot. Coat the top with cinnamon. I used a pretty hearty dose of cinnamon. Add 1 tbs of cloves 1 tbs of nutmeg (more or less to taste).

Turn on low and just let it do it's magic. I started my crock pot at 6pm. We headed to bed around midnight so at that point I propped the lid open with my wooden spoon to let some of the moisture out. Turn your crock pot off and then back on before heading to bed. Most have timer cut offs and will automatically turn off after a certain number of hours. We were up with the sun to head to work and our butter was done right at 6am.

Remove the apples from the crock pot. Put them in a food processor and process until smooth.