Baking Apples

I have done more freezing vegetables and making jams and jellies this year than I have in a long time.  My mom was the one who always did the canning around our place.  We would help gather it up and prepare it but mama did most of the work then she shared it with all of us.  As I was picking up pears, I started trying to remember if mama ever put up pears.  Even though I couldn't remember the pears, I could almost smell the apples baking.  I remember how the house would smell of apples and cinnamon.  We had wood heat most of my life and mama would core the apples and put real cow butter in them, with some sugar and cinnamon then put them under the stove or heater they would slow cook all night and they tasted so good.  I don't know that I could ever reproduce the taste of those apples.  She dried a lot of apples too.  We didn't have food dehydrators back then, we had a couple of sheets of tin and an old sheet.  Mama would peel and slice apples and lay them on that old sheet and they would dry in the sun.  When they were completely dried out she would put them in a flour sack and if you shook them they would rattle.  Then ever so often through the winter she would cook them up and put them in the middle of fried pies.  Man oh man my mouth is watering just thinking about those pies.  She always made a big stack at Christmas, if my dad went missing, odds were he had a cup of coffee and had slipped off with one of mama's pies.  Thanks for stopping by my blog and sharing my memories.