Monday, October 28, 2013

Dissertation and Applesauce?

Totally random title, I know but that's how things seem to be rolling these days at Wilted Acres.  I have a meeting this week with my dissertation chair and I am very disappointed in my progress up to this point.  Time is carved out each weekend but I just can't seem to get into a groove.  I've tried working on it each night but haven't been very good about that either.  In all honesty, I would love to throw in the towel but I can't.  I have too much riding on this.
One of the things the Hubs and I have started doing is "tag teaming" church.  I get up and take Babycakes to Sunday School while I attend my adult class.  Then Jeff comes to the worship service so I can leave at 11:00 and get started on the dissertation.  Here is the set-up I had going on yesterday when I came home.


Cleo the cat is SUCH a big helper.  She makes certain that she get some kitty love in while I work.  I know it looks like I'm watching a video - I was but I promise it was dissertation related. ;-)

When the Hubs and Babycakes arrived home from church we made lunch and sat down together.  In the process of making lunch, I noticed all of the apples we had accrued on the kitchen counter.  Living in an area that had a large supply of apples during this time of year, I seem to have an abundance.  Not wanting them to go bad I decided to go ahead and use them to make applesauce.

I decided I would share my stellar apple-sauce making skills with you all while I was at it!  The first thing you need to do is peel and slice your apples.  I had a variety but I like the sweeter ones for my sauce.  Today I had about 8-10 apples.  Once you have them peeled and sliced put them in a pot with some water in the bottom so they don't scorch. (I didn't measure this but it was probably 1/2 to 1 whole cup.)

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Then I covered them and cooked them on medium heat until they came to a boil.  Turn the heat down to low and let them cook until soft.  I cooked mine about 20-30 minutes.  Next, you can mash them with a potato masher or blender if you want a less chunky sauce.  I like a little texture to mine so I just stirred it.

Then I added sugar to taste - in this case it was between 1/4-1/2 of a cup.  Again, it's to your taste and the amount of sugar you add will depend on your apples.  I've made it before and added no sugar.

After it cooked down and I stirred it it looked like this:
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The final step was to put it in a jar.  We have this SUPER sweet lady who live on our street who no longer cans, so she gave us all of her canning jars.  Some of them are antiques!  While I didn't go through the canning process for this small amount of applesauce it can be done.  (Not that I've done it with applesauce!) I have, however frozen it in individual portion sizes and just thawed it out under running water.  This was particularly popular when Babycakes was a baby (that seems a little redundant).

Any who... here is the final applesauce step.

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Seriously easy and not that expensive to do.  This can be done with basic kitchen supplies.  I do, however, happen to have a funnel especially for canning jars that I picked up at a yard sale for $0.50 a few years back.  Our local Wal-Mart also sells a plastic version.

So that was my Sunday here at Wilted Acres.  I'm sure you are all just about to pass out from the excitement.  Until next time...