Apple sauce

Mike finally agreed some apples are ready, and today we picked some. I still have 1 bag of frozen apples I'll need to use, and we picked 4 ice cream pails worth today, which is maybe one quarter of what is on the tree. Mike is going to make some into sauce, and I'll make some into pie.  The rest we'll likely freeze for cooking over the winter or eat fresh. My nephew Merlin (the biggest apple lover I have ever met) will likely get a bunch of them if he is interested, but he was not so happy about the first one I offered.

Making apple sauce is pretty easy. First you rough chop the apples, then you cook them in a bit of water (essentially steam) for 20 minutes.   We have a food mill, so we just put the apples through that after they are cooked to remove the seeds, stems and peel. Then we sweeten them to taste for apple sauce and can them. On hot days, we often cook on the BBQ's side burner, but today the high is only 23, so we can cook and can inside. The basic ratio is 12 pounds of apples to 3 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar. You also add about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. We skipped the sugar this time, as we use this puree for an oil substitute in baking.  We did add cinnamon, though. Mike keeps trying to can in the pressure caner which never seems to work out, so while the sauce tastes great, he still isn't happy with it.

In addition to a food mill, the other great tool we use is an apple peeler.  It works best with eating size apples (which ours are), because it cores and peels. We got ours used at a garage sale, but I like so much I'd buy it new at Lee Valley.