I imagine we all have our favorite season. Did I mention that I actually have two? Two favorite seasons. I know what you are thinking here: we don’t have seasons.
This.
This is an occasional lie.
Sometimes here in this humid city, in this Southern state we, we get lucky. Real lucky. We might experience warm days with low humidity–yes we will definitely take that–and then we get real weather. We go to bed at night and wake to a cool windy morning. And if we’re lucky this cool windy morning will last all. dang. day.
So in case you haven’t guessed it: Fall is the–most–favorite season. It’s just so dang perfect. There’s just cool enough weather to wear layers, put on boots, work in the garden with just enough sweat.
We still get to eat both Summer fruits while dabbling into the warm inviting spices of Fall.
Do y'all remember that bag of wine saps that I found uninspired? Well, I knew long before I got to them what they were to be. They would become the very thing I have had to do every Fall since I was a child: applesauce.
Every year, we get pulled out of school– mid-semester– to go on vacation.
Yeah, that’s real.
My mother passed on her stubborn love of all things Fall. Besides it was too hot to travel in the Summer. Too miserable. Too expensive to travel anywheres cooler in climate with three kids and two adults.
Where did we end up?
In Georgia and before they lost the camper in the no-name flood of 1993, we would travel in the Winne as I like to call it.
The Winnebago–a 27ft travel trailer from the early 80’s.
It had brown leather.
Orange and yellow poppies on the interior.
Sometimes we would bring our orange cat: Pumpkin. Who would sit in the sink and yowl the entire time we rode through the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.
We would do very Fall like things including visits to any-all-of the nearby apple orchards. We would buy bushels. Bushels. Of apples by variety. We would eat baked apples with the richest ice cream I have ever tasted. We brought an apple corer. And that was that–every vacation after that had all three of us kids peeling and coring apples. Sure the apple corer made it easier. Clamped to the table and all. But bushel after a bushel, after bushel the muscles in your arms start to burn.
Gallon upon gallon of applesauce was made. We gave it away. We ate as soon as it came off the stove. We ate it reincarnated as a apple bundt cake. And I will still make a request for that bundt cake for my birthday. every. dang. year.
So in the end I knew what was to become of that bag of wine saps.
What else could it have been?
Applesauce
Yield: ½ gallon of sauce
Prep Time: 30 mins
Cook Time: 4 hours
Place a 8 qt stock pot over medium high heat. Throw in an entire stick of butter, 1 oz of fresh ginger, chopped. 4 tbsp Jack Daniels whiskey. Juice from 2 lemons. 2 cinnamon sticks. Melt the stick of butter, then add the fruit:
5 lbs winesap apples, peeled, cored and chopped. 2 lbs plums, pitted and chopped. 2 lbs peaches (yea peaches. Remember the marrying of Summer and Fall fruits?) peeled and chopped. Toss to coat the fruit. Add 1 cup light brown sugar and 1 cup white cane sugar. Toss to coat. Put a lid on it. Reduce the heat to low. After an hour remove the cinnamon sticks. Allow to cook for 3 more hours. Remove from heat and allow to cool. It is up to you at this point: if you like a chunky sauce leave it as is and if y'all got some youngins then puree the sauce in a food processor. Will last up to 2 weeks if no longer in the fridge. Otherwise you can freeze it. The sauce will last up to a year.
This. This sauce has a lot of warm spice to it. Works great on porkchops. Just sayin’.
