If you are going to ruin an apple...

Since its apple picking time here in WPA I've been looking for ways to make my abundant stash of apples last longer into next year.

We have a great local orchard, no junk on or in my apples, that sells bushels cheap!  (ugly wonderful little apples not shining red, no wax needed, just close your eyes and eat a real apple!)

Usually we just chomp into an apple and enjoy but since I wanted to save some appley goodness for spring when fall seems so far away I started checking into cooking my apples (also because I have some cookie recipes that are really yummy w/ applesauce).

Do you know how easy it is to make applesauce?  Why would anyone EVER buy that stuff in jars at the grocery store that tastes just like so much sugar and water?

If you have a slow cooker the only effort involved is getting the apples into the cooker.

I have this weird handy thing that you just set on top of the apple and push.  Out comes the core and the apple is sliced into 6 or so pieces.  Now my son wasn't too keen on the apple sauce with the skins in it so I quickly peel the apples for his sauce.

I have the slow cooker on low w/ a 1/2 cup of water or so in the bottom, throw in a little of whatever seasoning strikes our fancy - some brown sugar, some with nutmeg, some with a little vanilla; squeeze in the juice from a lemon and stir.  Start chunking up the apples and dumping them in.  I probably used 6 lbs of apples in the first batch.  I measure less and keep track of less and less as this goes on.

I cover ours and leave it all day.  This was entirely by accident.  I first intended to do Low for 4 hours or so but we got held up shopping and when I came home to get out the potato masher and go to town on the apples in the cooker it was already sauce, no more mashing required, just a quick stir.

It was so yummy it was danged near all we ate for a week.  The next weekend I vowed we would actually SAVE some.  This was the first time sans skins and it was nicer.  This batch went into quart freezer bags once it was cool enough, quick frozen flat then stacked like old records on their edges in my freezer for later.  I did lower the water content in this batch because the first seemed like if I had tried to freeze any it would have come out really watery later.  Hopefully these will thaw nicely.

Anyway, figured its been a while since I contributed here and thought I'd share something yummy.