It's all in the sauce

Applesauce is one thing in my family that we don't buy, or at least my mom didn't when I was a kid. I could never relate to my classmates who packed individual servings of Mott's in their My Little Pony lunchboxes. My sauce? It came from home—from our very own apple trees and made by my mom's hands. But the best part about our sauce was the sweetness: hello sugar!

Until last month, Noah had only gotten to enjoy the semi-sweet goodness of natural applesauce (and yes, it was store-bought). But then I happened to get my hands on some small servings of applesauce made by the ladies of my hometown church for their annual bazaar. You should have seen Noah's eyes bug out of his head when that pureed apple delight hit his tongue.

What can I say, that expression inspired me. I decided to mention to mom how much Noah loved the sauce. That's all it took! When she and my dad traveled to Central Ohio for my cousin's wedding, mom brought along several dozen apples from her yard as well as her trusty food mill, and an afternoon of applesauce was born.

As luck would have it, Noah went down for his nap just a half hour before mom and dad arrived in Mount Vernon. So we had plenty of time to get the process underway. Having only helped before, I was eager to learn from the master of sauce.

Step one: scrub and quarter every last apple. I was charged with cutting out the seeds and quartering. About a half hour into the process, I wasn't sure I had the easy job...but when I traded with mom a while later, I quickly learned that the scrubbing was a real pain in the heiny! Since these apples weren't cleaned and polished like the ones offered at Kroger, you really had to work at it to get off all of the rain and tree dirt. It's not as easy as it looks, believe me.

Looking back, though, I think step one was my favorite. There wasn't a lot of action except for the scrubbing and cutting, so mom and I had ample time to chat—just the two of us for once. David and my Dad were parked on their respective couches in the living room watching the Buckeyes play, so we had the kitchen and our catching up to ourselves.

All of that chatting led to me filling up two BIG pots of apples and two smaller ones. We added about a third of a pot of water to each, and slid them on the stove to boil and soften.


Step two: boil apples. This is the easy step. You need only stir every now and then and wait for the magic to happen. It was also a good time to get the food mill/grinder/canner contraption set up on my counter. Mind you, this is the same mill my mom has used for decades. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?


Step three: puree & strain. You can't miss a beat in this step. Apples are loaded into the holding tank at the top of the mill. One person cranks (me this time) and one person scrapes off the strainer section so that the juices can flow freely.


Step four: add sugar to taste. This time I used a blend of Splenda and good old fashioned white (probably gonna kill all of us) sugar. And I have to say, for such a large batch, I really didn't use all that much. Maybe two cups? Less? I don't know; there was no measuring. Just pour, taste. Pour, taste. After we consulted with one another, we agreed we'd reached applesauce sweetness utopia.


Step five: pour into containers, cool, cover and freeze. Below you can see the results of our efforts. Belive me, those plastic tubs hold a LOT of applesauce. We will easily be set for the year with this batch.


Final verdict? Great applesauce, great way to spend the day with my mom. Thanks, mom!