Freezer Applesauce (or how I rationalize spending $30 on apples)

I had a rare day off from work this week (lucky me, I'm working the weekend), and the little dude and headed out to pick some apples. I love apples. Looooove them. And I've passed that love onto my kid. Needless to say, we did a great job picking apples. We spent $30.00 on Spartan and Honeycrisp Apples. That's a lot of apples. 

 

In fact, this is maybe a quarter of the apples we picked. Geez. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work. 

While I generally reserve my buyer's remorse for shoes and not food, I knew I could not let these apples go to waste. The little dude promptly ate two, the my sweet husband made this deliciousness:

Then I decided to make freezer applesauce. I figure this child of mine eats applesauce by the quart so what better than to have yummy applesauce on hand all year. I'm not exactly detail oriented and terrified of botulism so I chose to freeze rather than can. Plus I'm lazy. And tired. 

Here's how it went down:

Ingredients:

-4 lbs of apples (we used Spartan/Honey Crisp combo)

-1/2 cup fresh apple cider (water could be used too)

Yeah. That's it. 

We tossed it on the stove at medium heat for 50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Basically, I think you want the apples to be soft enough to mash. 

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Then we mashed them up with a potato masher. It was amazing how easily the apples fell apart. 

We let the mixture cool the spooned it into quart size plastic bags, which we placed flat on a sheet pan and froze. I learned this trick from those work from home mom blogs. Apparently then you can have all your little frozen plastic bags lined up in the freezer. So smart. 

If you are not pleased with the flavor, you could always add a little sugar or maybe some cinnamon. But my boy loves apples and that is what he will get. 

That's our ambrosia for tonight. 

Xoxo

I don't know the recipe...

When I designed this blog years ago (and, yes, I am writing my first post NOW), my plan was to focus on the recipes my sweet and incredibly talent husband and I created for our family, along with the stories and the cute names we used to describe these recipes.  Like "Just pretend they're healthy cookies".  As much as I'm sure that would have been a riveting blog post, our lives took off.  My career moved in a hurry, we got pregnant, and all of a sudden we have a extremely lively 14 month old, an old craftsman home that needs lots of work, and luckily each other. 

What we haven't had is time.  Or at least time to work on things that are non-essential.  However, now that I get 7 hours of sleep a night, I feel like I'm missing something, and I think it's some kind of an outlet. 

I am a control freak.  I like to know everything I can.  I wish my brain worked differently, but despite my attempts, I can not change this.  I find myself working a full time job that I LOVE, working on a house that I LOVE, raising a son that I LOVE, and teaming up with a husband whom I LOVE, but there is no recipe to give me more time.  No recipe that allows me to fit in everything 100% and no one seems to have answers for me.   

I've been looking for "working mom blogs" online.  Those I have seen so far (which admittedly are just a few) kind of suck.  There a many, many work from home mom blogs.  They are filled with adorable families, colorful printables, baked goods, crock pot meals, funny anecdotes from daily adventures.  I love them, but mostly they make me feel guilty for loving my job and not personalizing baked goods regularly. 

I'm tired of women feeling like they must stretch themselves thin to be doing a good job.  I'm not sure how to fix this, but I am tired of it. 

Here is a photo of my kiddo after falling hard into a chain link fence while I stood right next to him talking to his teacher.  Guess what? I was actually doing a good job that day.  

 

I'm pretty sure no recipe exists, but a girl's gotta try, right?