Homemade Applesauce

It feels like fall has come early this year. This past week, I've woken up to chilly mornings with overcast skies. By noon, the gloom burns off, and the sun shines cheerily, warming my corner of the world up to a balmy 80 degrees.

I can hear you non-Angelenos snickering, "That's what you call fall?!" Yes, this is what we call fall. Through October, temperatures normally soar into the upper 90's and even crack into the 100's. 80 degrees is fall. When the temperature plummets into the 60's, our boots and sweaters come out. And when our swaying palm trees are regularly sprinkled with rain and our mountains are lightly dusted with snow, it feels like Christmas.

So, as I was saying, it feels like fall has come early this year. And with fall come hoards of inexpensive, delicious apples! Growing up, my mom made applesauce. I got the instructions from her yesterday, bought the ingredients today (aka just a lot of good apples), and made applesauce this afternoon. It was super simple, super inexpensive, and came out super delicious. And it makes good baby food.

Homemade Applesauce

Ingredients:

• 14 Fuji apples (or any other yummy, inexpensive apple)
• 1 tablespoon of butter or margarine

Directions:

• Cut the apples into eighths getting rid of the stems, cores, and stickers as you go.
• Put about a half inch of water in the bottom of a pressure cooker. Put your chopped apples on top of that. Put your butter on top of that.
• Seal the pressure cooker and put it over high heat until it comes up to pressure. Let it cook for a minute. Let off the pressure and pierce an apple to see if it's soft all the way through. If not, bring it up to pressure again and cook it for another minute.
• Use a soup wand, blender, or food processor to turn your mushy apples into applesauce. You can leave it a bit chunky. That's how I like it. Or you can make it smooth. That's how my baby likes it.

Notice that there's no sugar in this recipe. If your apples aren't very sweet, add sugar. If they aren't very tart, add lemon juice. Or just start with really yummy apples. :)