Applesauce

A month ago I got together with my grandma and we made and canned a whole bunch of applesauce.  My little cousin helped a little when he got home from school.

This was a 6-hour-applesauce-making extravaganza. 

Ingredients to make applesauce: apples, a little bit of sugar, and lots of work.

We had 2 bushels of apples.  

This is a HALF bushel

The apples all had to be washed.  Then we quartered the apples, cut out the core/stem area/seeds, cut the apple into smaller slices.  

All the "reject" pieces

These slices went into a pot with a little bit of water and then onto the stove where they cooked until they were mushy.  

Then the apples had to go through a food mill.  This is where the applesauce gets its pinkish color- the red peels of the apples don’t go through the food mill but the red gets ground out enough to give the applesauce a hint of pink.  

Then we added a little bit of sugar (about ¾ of a cup to 1 cup).  Then the hot applesauce went into the jars.  And then the jars went into the canner to be processed.  Then the jars came out to cool.  This whole process was repeated countless times and often multiple parts of this process were going on at once.

I think we ended up with 63 pints of applesauce. Here's just SOME of what we made.

Vision

A friend of mine posted a quote from Russell Simmons on Facebook some time ago.  It really struck me and so I put it into a document of the many things I come across that I want to remember or refer back to later.

Here’s what Russell Simmons said:

 “Now, that you have frozen your vision and are clear about it, tell the world what you are going to do. Once you share your vision with the world, you are stuck with it. Have the courage to let people expect you to make it happen. This is a good thing. Focus on that one vision and go to work to make it a reality. Then set the right goal for you. In the end, the overriding factor is whether or not you realize your dreams FOR you. Not the world. You.”

I agree with about 90 percent of what Russell Simmons says here.  Everyone should take the time to think about and formulate what vision each of us has for ourselves and the world.  And then we should tell the world about that vision.  That’s why I shared my dreams with all of you (and the whole world-wide-web), because I wanted to be “stuck” with my vision and my dreams, because I wanted to have the courage to make you all expect that I am going to make my dreams a reality (or at least some of my dreams).   I and all of us need to have that vision out in front of us and we need to focus on that and work to make it a reality.  In all this I concur with Russell Simmons.

Here’s where I disagree with Russell Simmons:

Yes, my vision and my dreams are for me.  My dreams are ways that I can fulfill my purpose here on earth.  I will find purpose, fulfillment, and happiness through striving for and reaching my goals and dreams.  BUT, in the end, the overriding factor is whether I realize my dreams for the world (not simply for myself).