applesauce

This weekend I am making applesauce.  There are 80 pounds of apples in my kitchen -- Jonagolds, Cameos, Fujis, Pink Ladies, and Fortunes. 

Have you ever seen a Fortune apple?  Here is one of them next to a fairly large Pink Lady.  The Fortunes taste rich, actually, and that is an unintended pun.  Fresh, they taste rich, warm and "cooked."  That flavor depth may go away when they're actually cooked down into sauce, but I'm hopeful.

I haven't been writing here very much because... D and E keep getting sick, and then after I help get them well, they get sick again.   Do I get a chance to get sick?  Nooooo...    In fact, I told D that I was going to drink wine tonight while I was peeling apples so that maybe I'd cut my finger off and have to go to the hospital for awhile so that I might be forced to rest.  He said, "Okay!" and then went down to watch Frosty the Snowman with E (after I made them dinner and cleaned up from it).  Yes, I'm irritated...

Today I got some dirty looks and comments at school for the way E continues to cough and I continue to send her to school.  She did stay home.  She stayed home from school two days.  She hasn't had a fever this whole time.  She has a bad-sounding cough and a ton of her usual energy and mental alertness.  I kept her home on the days when she was obviously sick and the days before and after that really sick time.  Should I keep her home all month?  If she's like her father, she'll have this cough the rest of December.  Ho, ho, ho.

So... 25 pounds of apples are on the stove, beginning their journey to sauce (all that will fit in my big soup pot).  I went out in the freezing dark to dump a second pale of peels into the compost pile, came here to say hello (and have a glass of wine), and now I will head back into the kitchen to peel more and load up the crock pot for a round of apple butter.

I made good applesauce last year so I'm hopeful this time around.  I've never made apple butter so we'll see about that.  In any case, I hope it snows a lot tonight and tomorrow because I think I'd like to be trapped at home with applesauce on the stove, you know?

Comments

[Stephanie]

I know just what you mean about the cough... Keelan just magically started producing a nice, gooey, deep chest cough last night. I was sure he was better. I sent him to school today. He didn't have any other symptoms. Ignore the stink eye... people act like they don't know that the cough goes on and on after the illness is gone.

After I saw your apples today, it made me want to make more sauce! Except I still have a lot in the pantry and those canned apples missing half their liquid... :-)

[Taylor]

Elecampane for the cough. Email me if you want better instructions.