Miss Thena’s Easy Applesauce

This post goes out in honor of my friend Thena, who got herself a homestead this weekend. She’s been working hard towards it for YEARS and when I was up in Washington visiting her in June, she showed me around this lovely bank-owned acreage with an orchard, outbuildings, chicken coop, a pond, fenced pasture, and a woodstove. She and her partner had just made their offer on it that day and were filled with all kinds of wonderful homesteading dreams. Well, I got a message from her yesterday saying it is a done deal. Her homesteading dreams are coming true.

And on to the story of how this has to do with applesauce:

I seem to be on a roll with fitting canning into some odd hours around my life. I got up early last Sunday morning and canned four quarts and four pints of applesauce using the recipe Thena taught me a few summers back. Before that, for some reason, I had been making applesauce canning way harder on myself than it needed to be. She came for a visit a mere few days after I moved into my farmhouse in Elmira with several paper grocery bags of translucent apples from her cousin’s orchard and told me that I was going to make applesauce and I was going to like it. Not being quite sure what would happen to me if I did not do as Thena said (I think she was recognizing I had moved right around canning season and that if she didn’t push me hard I may never fill that pantry), I got out all the quart jars I could find, and some she brought along and got the water heating in the canner. She informed me that the way most folks can applesauce was all wrong, and she was going to let me in on her secret recipe. It was simply this:

Chop apples, skins, cores and all and toss in a pot with a little water on the bottom

heat until mushy

run it all through a food mill (this removes the seeds and skins)

reheat to a boil

fill clean hot jars

boil 20 minutes in a boiling water bath

Before this, I was peeling and coring the apples, and then running the whole mess through my food processor after cooking. It took FOREVER. Not now. I had this all done by 9 on a Sunday morning.

Thank you Thena.

If I could come up there and make you can applesauce next weekend, I surely would, but knowing you, I bet you’ll do it in the midst of unpacking and all the mayhem, because you are hardcore that way.