"La La La I'm Helping*"

*And there's a good story here, read more at the bottom
!

But first some apple sauce

Apple Sauce

1 lb apples, cored, peeled and diced into 1 inch pieces
¼ cup water or cider
pinch of salt
½-1 cup sugar (optional, based on sweetness of apples)
Extra flavorings (optional) Vanilla, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Nutmeg

Place apples, sugar, salt and spices in a saucepan with the water or cider. Cover with a lid, bring to boil, and then let it simmer for about 10-20 minutes. The apples should be fairly soft. When the apples are soft, remove the pan from the heat, and whisk or smash the apples until they break up to your desired consistency. If the sauce is more watery, simmer for awhile longer to thicken further. That's it! Pour into clean jars, and freeze the ones you won't use right away since these don't contain any kind of additives for preservation.

PS: this recipe came from a variety of sources.

I was experimenting with the camera a bit, so here are some of the pretty apples.

*And now a good story.

We don't really know how the applesauce tastes. You see, Saturday morning I packed up a bunch of stuff and brought it out to the community market to do some demos--homemade peanut butter and a quick pizza dough. So I had flour, salt, sugar, oil, peanuts, etc... The market was fun. Chilly...I love fall! Then we packed up and headed home. Everything was put away.

Jump ahead a few hours to the making of the applesauce. Apples, lemon juice, pinch of salt, sugar, cinnamon, etc. Taste....Hmmm? Something isn't right. Seems salty. A little more sugar. Nope? That didn't fix it. A little more sugar? Nope. More cinnamon. A tiny bit of vanilla. Smelled great. Tasted a little off. Maybe it was too hot. When it was done it was poured into a bowl and into the fridge.

Dang that's salty. But I only added a pinch. Strange.

Sunday morning, J-lo's shuffling around the kitchen..."OMG I know what's wrong with the apple sauce."

He was helping put stuff away. And that was so wonderful and nice and allowed me to get to my nap sooner. But he didn't notice the difference of the between the bag of salt and the bag of sugar...they were both dumped into the sugar canister. So with each addition of sugar to the sauce, we also got another helping of salt. Perhaps as much 1/4 cup of salt! That's a lot of salt.

I do appreciate the help though! J-lo begged me not to tell this story. But it's a good story and can teach a lesson. If you need to add an ingredient back to the canister, make sure to taste and see that the right thing is going into the right canister!