Grandpa Kline's Poppycock {Not Your Average Caramel Corn}

As a child, I spent many hours each autumn putting cooked apples through a Foley food mill for our family to eat that winter.  The advantage to making applesauce this way is that the apples don't have to be peeled--just quartered and the centers cut out before cooking.  That means much less work is involved, as well as a pretty reddish color added to the sauce.

This week I got it in my head to make some homemade applesauce the way we made it all those years ago.  (A sign of increasing age? senility?  I hope not!)  So I bought 12 pounds of good cooking apples (these were Winesaps), washed them thoroughly in the sink, cut them up, and put them on the stove in two batches to cook over medium heat, with a little water added to the bottom to keep the apples from sticking and burning.  


Then I used a measuring cup to scoop the cooked apples into the Foley, and went to work. The key to good sauce is to stop turning the mill about every six or eight turns and run it in reverse a time or two, to keep the skins from clogging the holes.  It's not hard work, and it doesn't take very long.  And beautiful applesauce just appears in the bowl under the food mill.


Some people might want to add sugar, but I'm a purist and think that that detracts.  I got five quarts of sauce out of my twelve pounds of apples.  A caveat:  Unless you have a source to get apples free or at a very reduced price, making homemade applesauce is not particularly cost-efficient, especially if you include the value of your time.  Each quart cost me approximately $2.50 -- not real high, but not really a savings.  If the apples were free, though, it would have been well worth the effort.


I put the sauce in quart freezer bags and put them in the freezer.  It will taste very, very good this winter with my favorite cold-weather comfort food supper - Hashbrowns with onions, fried eggs, and . . . homemade applesauce!

Ann Bailes