I Made It All By Myself!

For whatever reason, the only time of year that I'm consistently so inclined to cook is autumn. It must have something to do with it getting cooler outside (surely it will feel like autumn sometime before the official start of winter) that brings out my nesting instincts and inspires me to want to cook comfort food for my family and friends. For almost a week now I've had the ingredients for a hearty and satisfying soup my mother swears by-- I'm thinking that tomorrow evening or Friday might be the day it actually gets made. But this afternoon I made applesauce.
And it, too, is hearty, satisfying, and best of all, super easy. I made it in the slow-cooker. Can't get any simpler that that, can it?

Here's what I did:

1) I cored and cut into chunks (with the peel on) approximately 3 lbs of apples. I used mostly the tried-and-true cooking apple, Granny Smith, with maybe five Galas thrown in for good measure and contrasting flavor.

2) After throwing the apples into my slow cooker, I mixed in a 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and one or two cinnamon sticks. You can use more, less, or no cinnamon sticks depending on your fondness or dislike for the spice. I happen to love it!!!

3) After turning the slow cooker onto the "high" setting, I went about my day and returned about 3 hours later when the apples were quite tender to the touch.

4) It took maybe an hour for the apples to cool down, after which I removed the cinnamon sticks and then used my totally cool immersion blender that my mom gave me last Christmas (if you don't have an immersion blender a food processor or potato masher will also work) to break down the peels and mash the apples a bit. The recipe I followed said at this point you can further sweeten the applesauce with another 1/2 cup of granulated sugar but I thought it was sweet enough without it.

Voila! Delicious, easy, and very autumn-celebrating homemade applesauce. The best part for me is knowing exactly what is in it (lots of delicious apples, some sugar, and cinammon) and what isn't (too much sugar and various ingredients with names I can't even pronounce).

Guess there's nothing left to do now except to enjoy the fruits of my labor!!

Mmmmmmmmm...