Voila! Applesauce!

   You should grab your kids, take them to an apple orchard , pick some fruit and give applesauce making a try! Easy-Peasy and lots of fun!

   Two five gallon buckets full of delicious, beautiful, red apples were picked today. After transporting them home, grinning the whole way with excitement, they were washed and ready to be transformed into.....well, lots of things!

   Lets start with this: you have to get yourself one of those apple peeler/corer/slicer gadgets from Pampered Chef. That thing really makes short work of the whole process of "apple-ing"! It's a great model, all metal and very durable. This is the first time I've used mine and I will be recommending it all over town! Getcha Some! It's $31.50 at http://www.pamperedchef.com/

   Anyway, after I played around with that handy-dandy piece of equipment for a while, I had peeled about a gallon of apples so I figured Id better make some chunky cinnamon applesauce.

    Ahh, Let me tell you the house was smelling FINE! Wonderful, in fact!   Heres what I did: 

•  I took all those fabulous peeled, sliced apples and threw 'em in a big 'ol stock pot (sometimes called a dutch oven)
•  I added about a cup of water and let them cook down for maybe half an hour.
• Then I mashed them up with a wooden spoon good and added about two cups of sugar and a couple of generous teaspoons cinnamon.
• I then let the whole fantastic mess cook down another half hour or so and I delighted in the aromas while I cleaned up the peels and cores that were lying around
•  Gave it another spoon mashing till  it was a consistency I liked
•  Put it in jars , processed them ( I'll eventually get around to a canning tutorial on this thing, but not today ) and Voila! Applesauce!

 Next project? Apple Butter! Coming soon!