They did it!
Monday July 01st 2019, 10:52 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Garden,Life

A great big pot of applesauce with a very small blond boy standing over it, grin big and hand wide as if about to do an exuberant splashdown into that tasty goop: it’s not my kid so I’m not putting his face here, but it was a great photo and it made my day.

I passed Ellen’s recommendation on to the mom of the Victorio Strainer so she doesn’t have to cut the seeds out next time, and then promptly ordered one myself so we could both use it when the Fujis come on. My mom used to have something like that all my growing up, only big, metal, and heavy,  essential to her for getting tomatoes to the right texture for chili sauce; my tomatoes have started turning color (bird netting was applied today) and I was feeling nostalgic. Mom, what’s your recipe? I know you told me thirty years ago…

Plus, all those apple seeds.

So we will try out that new toy and hopefully it will last for generations like Mom’s. Thank you, Ellen!


8 Comments so far
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We used a Foley food mill to make applesauce. No peeling needed, though we did core the apples before cooking. (Missed seeds weren’t an issue.)

On a different note, I so wish I could find crabapples – the kind for making jelly. Grew up on the stuff and really miss the tangy sweetness.

Comment by Anne 07.01.19 @ 11:30 pm

Anne, I was just coming here to talk about the Foley mill I still use! Mine was passed to me, and I still use it all the time. I don’t peel or core the apples – just quarter them, steam them, then toss them into the mill and crank away. I never thought about using it for tomatoes, though! More ways to use and store summer produce!

Comment by Pegi F 07.02.19 @ 4:03 am

I still use the old cone-shaped colander with the metal stand and the wooden masher so I don’t have to peel or core apples or tomatoes. I bought a fancy, expensive one with a name I could not pronounce and ended up selling it at a garage sale and going back to the old one.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 07.02.19 @ 8:07 am

I core the apples for applesauce/apple butter, because if you do you can eat the tasty cooked-together peels afterwards! (warning: they are a very generous source of fiber; I used to make Fiber Fruit Leather from them, but one needed to be moderate in intake)

Comment by KC 07.02.19 @ 9:37 am

I will still say that the one time I left seeds in transparent apples for sauce, the result was bitter…so I core them. I don’t know about other varieties. We had a transparent tree and a red gravenstein, and I would use the food mill for the transparent, and not for the gravenstein because it could stay chunky, so it was worth the work to peel (and besides, the apples were large so it wasn’t quite as bad.) I am spoiled on applesauce after so many years making my own. The gravensteins I would cook with brown sugar and spices, the transparents with white sugar. Now I don’t use sugar, my hubby is diabetic, but stir in some stevia in each pint as I open them. That way the flavor is still wonderful. I miss those trees.

Comment by Marian 07.02.19 @ 11:43 am

My mother had one, when I was a kid, that sounds like what Sherry in Idaho mentions, simpler than the linked one, but it made applesauce production easier for her, and given how much my brother could go through, she needed it!

Comment by ccr in MA 07.02.19 @ 12:06 pm

The Foley is good, the Victorio, for mass production, is incredible. It is continuous – no need to stop and clean out skins and seeds to add the next dose of cooked apples.

By the way, stems and blossom ends can produce bitter notes and the blossom ends in particular can break up and add dark flecks, so we do quarter the apples and do a quick trip of those bits. If you get clever, you can cut the apple in half just to the side of the stem/blossom end, then that small piece can go in the cooker as is. Cut the other one in half on the vertical axis just to the side of the stem/blossom again, and then it’s a cinch to trim those bits from just the one remaining piece.

Comment by twinsetellen 07.06.19 @ 1:14 pm

Oh, and I do what Marian does sometimes, too, and actually peel some for chunky applesauce. Not often, and not when I’m canning dozens of jars, but sometimes it’s worth it.

Comment by twinsetellen 07.06.19 @ 1:15 pm



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