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The Apples of Winter

December 30th, 2010 by Thomas Wills

Filed under Crawford, Culture, Food and Wine, Hotchkiss, Paonia


So you, being a beginner Locavore but serious about your newly chosen lifestyle, now have net bags of local potatoes, onions and beautiful braids of garlic stored safely in your cellar along with those brightly colored jars of tomatoes, chutneys, jams, salsas and sauces, and four or five kinds of canned fruit. A half of a Princess beef in the freezer and maybe a sand-filled bin of sweet carrots sits nearby. A case of valley wine, asleep like contented infants, is resting on the rack with empty spaces here and there, left in honor of casualties from the past holidays.

But the apples, two bushels bought in the local-food lust fever of a late North Fork Valley autumn, languish. The thing about apples is that some “keep” and others fade by New Year’s, soften and wrinkle. And you, the neophyte Locavore, still relearning your great grandmother’s easy wisdom, have simply bought the varieties you find tastiest, with little thought to storability.

“Just put them in a cool cellar and they’ll last a few months,” the apple woman, all rosy cheeked like her products, told you.

A “few months” have passed and now in January, a month into the genuine part of winter, your hoard of apples have begun to change. There is now a certain bounciness to their flesh when pressed with a thumb and when eaten, they reveal an odd, less than satisfying, dry, grainy texture, against your tongue. Every few days you sort and remove fruits with soft, dark decay beginning on their previously pristine, gleaming skins––now slightly dull. It’s time for such stored whole apples to transition to their next incarnation as:

Easy Multi-Purpose Apple Sauce
This really is easy as far as the cooking part with only a few ingredients needed. Of course the peeling and coring may take a bit of time but think of it as time to have a good conversation or listen to music. Slow life down a little.

Apples – lots of them depending on the volume of sauce you want to produce.
Cinnamon and allspice – to taste (optional)
Local honey – also to taste depending upon the natural sweetness of the apple variety. Note: local applesauce canners, Leroux Creek Foods on Roger’s Mesa, use apple juice concentrate for additional sweetness. Technically you can make applesauce with no supplementary sweetener and no ingredients beyond just the apples. Some apples are naturally very sweet.
The Process:
Peel, core and slice enough apples to at least fill a large stockpot or canning kettle…or maybe a couple. Any smaller batch isn’t really worth the effort put out. It is most efficient to process a bushel at a time. Fill the kettles almost to the top. Add just a splash of water (or local Big B’s apple juice) to the pot(s); the rest of the liquid will come from the apples.

Cook over medium heat at first stirring all the way to bottom of the pot to prevent any sticking. Give this your full attention, which is the secret to any successful cooking. After a while a full pot of sliced apples will cook down to a sauce filling only half of the pot. So a 12-quart pot full of raw sliced apples will yield about 6 quarts of finished sauce. Taste by dropping a spoonful onto a cool ceramic plate.

Can you imagine eating this with your oatmeal or local cracked wheat cereal in the morning with no additional sweetener? Not quite? Get out the local raw honey. How about spices? Add a little at a time, honey and spices as needed to create your personalized applesauce. Cook until thoroughly blended.

At this point you can decide to either make a slightly chunky “sauce” or a multi purpose filling/sauce (my choice).
If you want a sauce simply use a potato masher to squish up the cooked pieces of apples. Voila! Chunky applesauce. Cook a little more and you’re done.

Finally, can or freeze the sauce to make your life sweeter until the 2011 fall apple season rolls around. If you can in classic quart or half-quart jars, make some cool personal labels with your computer, printer and you’ll always have the perfect gift for those occasions that pop up throughout the year.

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