Slacker Blogger, and What to do with Fall Apples

Summer has not been a good season for blogging. In fact, I'm not really sure what summer WAS a good season for. I've had a serious case of the blahs for months now. I haven't really worked on much; I've pieced a couple of simple quilt tops, and recently I've been doing some needle-turned applique, just to have something to do in front of the TV. But I'm not really inspired, if you know what I mean.

I can only chalk it up to working too many hours at a soul-draining (but good-paying) job (and yes, I AM grateful to have it in this economy, even more so since my company continues to send more and more of my profession's jobs to India every day).

At any rate, now that my favorite season is here (beautiful Fall after the Texas heat of summer!) I hope to find some kind of rhythm in my life again, not to mention some good old-fashioned drive to create. In the meantime, since I don't have any good work to share with you, I'll give you my recipe for applesauce. Actually, it didn't start out as my recipe; I got it from simplyrecipes.com and made a few modifications.

I made this for the first time last week after buying about 20 lbs. of apple "seconds" at the Farmers Market, and it was the best applesauce I've ever eaten! I'm headed back to the market this morning to get more apples and make enough applesauce to can for the winter. Enjoy!

Applesauce Recipe

Preparation time: 45 minutes. The sugar amounts are just guidelines, depending your taste, and on the sweetness of your apples, use less or more. If you use less sugar, you'll likely want to use less lemon juice. The lemon juice brightens the flavor of the apples and balances the sweetness (don't skip the lemon juice--it really does add something to the flavor!).

Ingredients

• 3 to 4 lbs of peeled, cored, and quartered apples. (Make sure you use a good cooking apple like Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, Jonathan, Mcintosh, or Gravenstein.) (Note: I used whatever was in the "seconds" bag; a mix of sweet & tart, I think).
• 4 strips of lemon peel - use a vegetable peeler to strip 4 lengths
• Juice of one lemon, about 3-4 Tbsp
• 3 inches of cinnamon stick (Note: I also added about 2 t. ground cinnamon)
• 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar (I ended up using more--about 1/2 c)
• up to 1/4 cup of white sugar (I substituted Splenda for the white sugar, and used a little more because my apples weren't that sweet)
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Method

1 Put all ingredients into a large pot. Cover. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Taste and add more brown/white sugar or Splenda and cinnamon, if desired.

2 Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon sticks and lemon peels. Mash with potato masher.

Ready to serve, either hot or refrigerated. Delicious with vanilla ice cream or vanilla yogurt (I added some to oatmeal for breakfast--yum!).

Freezes easily, lasts up to one year in a cold freezer.

Pasted from <http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/>