Applemania

Along with all the other things to love about fall- there's apple season. I'm a big fan of the humble apple. It's tasty fixed so many ways. And this year I have every reason not to restrain myself, because my sister and her husband have given me a bushel and a half of apples from their trees.


So, we've had applesauce. I make it in bulk using a food mill. I'm not generally a fan of single-use gadgets, but this one is so darned useful if you like applesauce, that it's worth every minute of cabinet space for the 11 months of the year it waits for its true purpose. So all I do is wash and quarter the apples and remove stems. (These being somewhat feral apples, I also remove unwanted wildlife. Future dinner guests will be happy to know that part.) Fill a big pot.


Add water and boil to mush. Then run the whole mess through the food mill (sort of a pan with a sieve in the bottom and a crank/paddle arrangement that presses the mush through the sieve. Then add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg (and sometimes ginger) to taste. Yum.


And it freezes very well, without the funny taste (or all the work) of canning. I either pour the sauce into a bag inside a container (seal the bag, freeze, then you can pop the frozen sauce-in-a-bag out of the container and reclaim the container for use). Or I pour them into my collection of single-serving yogurt cups. The cups are easy to decant into a bowl, and five minutes in the microwave gives me hot applesauce for breakfast on a cold winter morning.

In addition to the industrial production of applesauce, we've had pie.


Apple crisp.


And applesauce spice cake (my grandmother's recipe).


There's only one thing that scares me a little. I'm only halfway through the first box of apples.