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Applesauce

When faced with a bushel of apples, applesauce is the only rational response. (Thanks, Marie, for reminding me of this fact.) Processing so many apples any other way is simply too time consuming. You can always hold back a few for pies, but the bulk of the bushel is for applesauce that you can enjoy all winter long.

Applesauce is both easy and quick by bulk food standards. I coarsely chopped the apples, cutting out the seed section. Not only do you not need to peel the apples, but leaving the peels on makes the applesauce better: they add dietary fiber and help to turn the finished applesauce that pleasing red color.

Into the pot they go, along with some apple juice, brown sugar, three 3" sticks of cinnamon, and a little lemon.

After 20 minutes of cooking, I fished out the cinnamon sticks and smoothed out the apples with my stick blender.

The sauce went into the jars for canning. I diverted a bowlful for taste testing. It was wonderful---so much more apple flavor than what you taste even with upscale store brands. I could also taste and feel the added texture of the peels, which gave the applesauce a nice bite.

The bad news is that this batch of nine pints used up about a third of the bushel. I have more work to do: first to can the rest, then to find shelf space to store these treats.

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