Applesauce Mmmmmm

I have been lucky enough to learn to make homemade applesauce and this year I was lucky enough to help not one person but two, put their stores up for the winter. And I'm not being sarcastic for once. I mean it. It was fun and so easy that everyone ought to stop buying that horrible stuff from the store.

My Mom and my Grandma have been making applesauce for as long as I can remember. I don't think there was ever store bought applesauce in our house ever. My Dad used to (and occasionally still does) tell us stories about what sometimes gets into those huge commercial vats of applesauce. We had a plant in our town. I won't spoil your enjoyment of store bought applesauce with the disgusting tales that have me going pale when people put it on their table.

My Mom makes her thick and a little coarse. Grams makes hers thinner and sweeter. Anyway you spoon it up, it's all good. We use Transparent Apples for our recipe. They are verrrry tart if you try to eat them. We core and quarter them then put them into a big stock pot with several cups of water (depending on the size of the batch and what constancy you like your applesauce) and let them come to a boil. After they have essentially become mush, you put them through a Foley Food Mill which separates the pulp from the peel. You add sugar to taste and then package it up. It freezes well if you let it cool before storing it.

We were scammed one year and instead of getting transparent apples, we were sold lode-eye apples which look essentially the same. They are freakin' disgusting. They leave an after-taste that will have you swearing off of any applesauce for a while. I'm sort of interested in trying to make applesauce from Golden Delicious or Granny Smith. Maybe I'll try a small batch on my own. I don't usually get into the canning and preparing of bulk foods like this, but applesauce is fun and it's probably something that I will hand down to my friends' kids since I'm not planning on having them myself.

I did 2 bushels of apples total and I'm looking forward to eating my share this winter! Do you guys have any family traditions with food that you hand down through the generations? We have a few, but this one is the most time intensive one.