Applesauce

 It’s fall when the house smells of cooking applesauce and apple cake.  Arne’s apple tree is filled with apples this year and they are falling off the tree every day.  So it is time to move into applesauce production!  I’ve just finished my 4th batch, plus I’ve made an apple pie and an apple cake to boot.  My right thumb has little cuts from the coring I do holding the apple in my hand.  Earlier this summer, Arne picked lots and lots of the little apples off.  I can tell where he did this because there are BIG apples down on the lower branches.  Interestingly the apples come in all sorts of sizes and shades of yellow, green and red.  There are 2 inch diameter apples, 3 inch diameter apples and a few even bigger.  I prize the big apples.  There are even cute little itty bitty apples, 1 inch in diameter clustered on a branch, like Brussel sprouts on a stem.  I like to do the preparation this time consuming way, rather than using an apple mill because I like chunky applesauce.  I make it plain with just the smallest amount of sugar added.  I make it with cinnamon and today I made the batch with lots of candied ginger in it.  I feel an urgency about doing this because in 10 days we’re leaving to spend two months in Michigan.  At the rate I’m picking the apples and producing the applesauce, the freezer will be full and I will have gifted nearly everyone I know a tub of homemade applesauce.  Then I’ll hire the neighbor boy to pick up all the fallen apples and into the compost they go.