I love making applesauce. It’s just so easy. Last fall I made tons of it while we were working on getting H to eat solids. I went through so many apples from local farms and markets, and I made two batches using my favorite recipe, but this time I didn’t add any seasoning at all. Just straight up apples for the little lady learning to eat. She hated it, of course, so I have been eating all of it myself through the winter.
I don’t know if you can tell, but I made two batches with two different sets of apples. See the color difference in that jar on the left?
My first batch was much lighter.
My second batch had a more golden brown color to it.
I’m making my notes here so I’ll remember what I did next time. I’m trying to be good and wait until fall rolls around again to get apples in season. This is incredibly difficult for me as I find apples to be one of the most tempting things in the store. Clementine once noted that all food that is good is round. She is on to something there, but I’m holding out for fall. Maybe by then H will like the stuff.
I remember watching Nana make applesauce. It was a lengthy process. She did it once a year in the fall so you can imagine how many pounds of apples she used to make enough to last the winter. I remember seeing bushel baskets of them.
Her process involved putting the cooked apples into a sieve. It sat in a rack on the table with a big bowl under it. She mashed them through with a wooden bat (like a baseball bat only smaller). She cleared the skins from the sides of the sieve between each refilling. Sometimes she let us mash the apples in the sieve. It really took some strength, but then many of her cooking chores involved strength (making dough, cutting up chickens, lifting canned things from the bath, lifting cast iron pots).
If she had had a food processor, a stand mixer, a dishwasher her work would have been much easier. It seemed like she spent most of her day in the kitchen. These memories make me appreciate these conveniences a lot.
BTW She had a manual meat grinder for making her own hamburger and meatloaf mix. And, I remember when she got her hand mixer. She was a very happy camper. But for many things she still preferred mixing with a wooden spoon and mashing with a potato masher. I wonder what she would have thought of an immersion blender?
Really miss her.