Pink Applesauce

Last weekend I went to the local orchard and bought 6 bushels of apples.
For years, my girlfriend Laurel and I have gotten together each fall to make applesauce. As our families have grown, so has our applesauce-making. This year we made 5 bushels of apples into sauce.
Since I did not grow up making applesauce, I have left it to Laurel to determine the best apples. So far, she has been right on target! In our opinion, the best local apples for making "pink" applesauce are Red Rome. We can only find them at one local orchard and they are only available for a very short time. But when we get the right apples...YUM!

Now, since we have to make more and more sauce as the children get older, the way we work it out (without killing our backs in the meantime) is to get the children to help more and more.

First, we wash the apples--a bushel at a time in a big sink of water. By "we" I mean "the kids." This is the earliest job for the children. Once they can walk, they can help put apples into the sink to wash. By the time they can reach into the sink from the bench, they can run a rag over the apples. For the past several years, my girlfriend and I have not had to wash a single apple.
Next comes the cutting. This is probably the most time-consuming part of the process. However, as you will see later, all we need to do is cut the apples into quarters, the Victorian strainer will do the rest.After the apples are cut, they are put on the stove to boil with some water until they are nice and tender.The next step is to put the cooked, soft apples through the Victorian strainer. This is another part of the job where kids come in handy (see my smiley girl Jalyn). I think the kids actually enjoy this part of the job and would do it more if it wasn't taking away the playtime they have with each other. Next, we mash down the apples into the strainer...And this is what comes out...beautiful, pink applesauce!The next step is the quickest of all. We add just a touch of sugar and ladle the warm applesauce into the containers for the freezer!
This year's total was approximately 37 quarts of canned applesauce (for Laurel's family) and approximately 70 containers (varying from a pint to a quart) of frozen applesauce for my family. This does not count the many apples consumed by our hungry children throughout the day (we did stop to feed them lunch).
Now, what to do with that last bushel of apples...