and on to the apples...

at the farmer's market last week i picked up 20 pounds of organic apples. the cosmetically challenged sort--$1/pound. i had grand plans of turning out pint after pint of applesauce and apple butter, but the reality was that 20 pounds of apples sure isn't all that much. total yield was something in the neighborhood of 8 pints of applesauce. 1 apple crisp. no apple butter. i guess you've got to count the few that the kids pilfered from the pile while the apples waited for a couple of days to meet their destiny. plus a couple in our morning oatmeal. and that's the way that 20 pounds of apples shook out.

still, it was nice to put up some applesauce, even if it was less that i expected. i used the recipe from food in jars, omitting all of the spices except for cinnamon, since my kids like a really plain flavor when it comes to applesauce. i was surprised at just how sweet the flavor was without any added sugar. though i shouldn't have been--the apples were downright delicious eaten out of hand.

my friend molly was working alonside me in the kitchen. this time, the house didn't get destroyed, as we chose to do the slicing and the cooking during naptime. novel idea, no?

when the girls got up, molly helped them put together an apple crisp for dessert. she brought along an amazing tool--the apple peeler/corer/slicer. if i ever come across one of these in my thrifting adventures, you'd better believe it's going in my cart. the only question is to why molly let me core and slice all the applesauce apples by hand when she had this tool sitting in her bag. ahem. molly?




the girls loved taking turns spinning the crank, which ran the peel off of each apple in loooooong shoestrings. too fun. and their apple crisp was delicious. i should know, i ate most of it myself! in related indulgent confessions, if you are local, do yourself a favor and pick up a quart of the straus organic eggnog. i am not an eggnog person but this stuff is pretty divine. i've even been using it in place of cream in my tea. yum!