Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Hope. Despair. Ecstasy!

Free is a very good price.  Usually.  These apples were free, and I thought they would make a decent sauce.  I hoped they would.

Ugly, crushed, green--we put two full buckets
in the compost from the first five we gathered.
The tree belongs to my sister's neighbor.  It's an ancient old dame, spreading like a million giant broken spiders across the sky and shading hundreds of square feet of the earth. This year it was fecund and abundant beyond anything in past memory. Never sprayed, the tree's fruit began the thinning process early.  Small, medium and large apples dappled the ground and rolled down the street to become early sauce under the passing cars.  While picking up a few from the pavement yet uncrushed, I wiped one clean and took a bite.  H-m-mmm. Might be OK.



Cooking up the cut-off apples until they just start to
fall apart.


Five-gallon buckets were filled, carted home, and the process began.  Three quarters is the most you get with a "wind-fall."  The rest of the apple is brown moosh.  It takes time to cut off the salvageable part:  the price of free. There is some satisfaction in the making good out of something that otherwise would be compost.  Holding that glimmer as I cut was the most important of Things I get to do today.







The skins were green making the sauce much darker
than I considered "pretty."
Part way through the process, I took a lick of the still warm sauce.  Ugh.  It seemed tasteless and sour.  All this effort for something we may not even want to eat!  Before I continued, I thought a true test would be only fair. A bowel of sauce, a goodly amount of sugar (how much, you ask?  Until you feel guilty is my husband's response), and a spoon later and suddenly my whole being was alert and alive!  Could it be?  Could this unknown, ugly-at-its-best, free apple make sauce that tasted so good it nearly rivaled the yellow transparent sauce raved about in a previous post?


Used a 24-quart cooler to hold the sauce before stirring in
the sugar.  


Many buckets and boxes of apples later (these from the tree without the brown moosh stamped into the side), hours in the kitchen with my sister gamely cranking the sauce machine, friendly family chatter in abundance, and we were the richer by 62 quarts of superb sauce. Ecstasy!

8 comments:

  1. I love applesauce. We make it frequently but I use the easy version. Did you then can it?

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    1. We put it in the freezer. Please, explain for me quickly! What is the easy version?

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  2. Good Grief, it would take me more than a lifetime to eat that much sauce! Good for you, you hard workin' woman! Did you half it with Sister? When my kids were home, I used to grab up all the freebies offered, but it is not necessary right now.

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    1. Good Grief is right! 9 Quarts to my sister, 10 quarts to my daughter, 9 quarts to my mother. And the rest will get us through the winter very nicely with a bit left over for next year in case the tree takes a rest. It's all in the freezer.

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  3. Brings back the old days when my mom had six grand kids to crank the handle! Yield: a winter's worth of apple sauce for four families.

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    1. Yes, the old days with a cone-shaped sieve for the cooked apples and having to clean it out after every kettle. I do love the crank kind that spits the peelings out as it goes. Either way it's the kids' job to make the sauce come out.

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  4. Awesome! You will definitely enjoy the fruits of your labor! I'm glad you rescued and put these apples to good use.

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    1. In winter they will be wonderful. What am I saying? They are fabulous right now!

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