It's applesauce time!

Once again, it's that time of year, time to make gallons of applesauce. When August's dry heat grates on my nerves, fruit flies seem to get a bit too prolific, and the winds are kicking up dust, there's at least one thing to look forward to-APPLES!

I get very excited about September. For one, it's back to school (before the novelty wears off). For another, it's the season of windfall apples. From August-October, the alleys, curbsides, sidewalks, and streets of Portland are full of apples that have fallen off the tree. Generally speaking, it seems that nobody in this day and age has any idea what to do with the all those apple trees growing in their yards. Sadly instead of being used, they typically fall down, hit the pavement, rot, and collect an admiring horde of buzzing bees and boisterous yellow jackets. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Lucky for me, I guess, that there's so many free apples for the taking. One of the cruelest things that's afflicted me since childhood is the absolute inability to eat anything except homemade applesauce. The blame lies entirely with my grandmother, whose homemade applesauce is the standard by which I judge everything. I'm sure there was nothing terribly special about her recipe or technique. The only thing I recall her doing is chopping up the apples she picked and cooking them down until they were absolute mush (and adding sugar if perhaps the end result was lacking in sweetness). To my palate, it was absolutely divine.

For some reason though, apple sauce that comes in jars at the store tastes absolutely nothing like this. For one it's absolutely bland--it doesn't seem to have any taste at all. If can you get past the total lack of flavor, there's still the texture. It's all wrong...to me, commercially prepared applesauce has a texture that's just weird...kind of mealy and strange, not smooth and creamy like the homemade stuff. Needless to say, I NEVER EVER buy applesauce at the store. If I'm in situations where I have to eat it, I pour tons of cinnamon and sugar on it to trick myself into thinking it's not horrible.

Fortunately I did learn how to make it from watching her. Making applesauce is extremely simple (small children could easily help do this), although a bit labor intensive. I deal with that by making it one of my seasonal chores that I plan on doing once a year. The only thing you need to make applesauce is a supply of apples, some large pots, and something to store all the applesauce in.

The first step is to acquire some apples. A lot of apples. Needless to say, if you don't have to pay for them, that would be best. If you have your own tree, this is the answer to what to do with all those apples that you didn't know what to do with. Otherwise, be on the lookout for neighbors whose trees are accumulating tons of fallen apples at the base, old apple trees on vacant lots or abandoned farmsteads. Sometimes you'll find them in the darndest places due to the nature of urban sprawl and rampant development...I know of a rather lovely apple tree that's growing in a corporate office park. If for some reason you live somewhere where there's literally no appletrees around (like NYC) your next best option is a trip to the countryside where there's U-Pick apple orchards. Only as a last resort would I recommend actually purchasing them retail at a store. To make applesauce you need a really large quantity of apples (think of full grocery bags full of apples), so this is not something you want to buy if you're paying more than 79 cents a pound. If you're totally screwed and have nothing available but expensive store apples, you might as well do something more manageable like bake a pie...those are good too.

The next thing I should mention about free apples is they're usually free for a reason--don't expect them to look like those waxed beauty contestants in the produce sections at the grocery store (wax is what makes them look shiny, real apples are rarely "shiny"). For one, free apples are completely "organic" in the sense that they came off a tree that's never been sprayed with the dozens of nifty chemicals that commercial orchards use to deter the hungry hordes of insects and pests that like to afflict apples. So for those of you who are trying to eat mostly organic foods, congratulations, this is about as organic as it could possibly get. What this means though, is that there's probably some worm holes, bad spots, deformities, and other cosmetic afflictions. Fortunately appearances aren't everything when it comes to cooking with apples.

When it comes to applesauce, beauty isn't what you're looking for in apples. Just close your eyes to all those cosmetic blemishes, and pick up anything you find that's structurally intact, doesn't have huge soft spots, isn't blatantly rotten, and isn't crawling with ants and other insects. A few holes are fine. A small brown spot or two won't hurt you. You'll be peeling and cutting the bad spots out anyway, so as long as it's nothing major, you can ignore it.

As far as quantities go, you'll need as many apples as you can acquire. Think brown paper bag! Apples cook down to almost nothing, so you will be able to cram tons of chopped apples into a pot, only to discover that the pot's half empty when you open it and they're fully cooked. Fill up a bucket full! It make take several days to acquire enough if you're scrounging around an neighborhood, or you may happen upon one very heavily laden tree and it will meet all your needs. One thing I don't recommend is storing found apples indoors if you can help it because they will create a fruit fly problem quickly.

As far as varieties go, it really doesn't matter which ones you use. My usual strategy is to acquire as many different varieties as possible--some sweet, some tart. If you use a combination of red, yellow, and green, you should have a complex array of flavors to work with. Reds are usually sweet but bland. Yellow apples are often ideal for applesauce. Green apples of course are very tart. Any one of these alone might be too bland or tart, but combined with another, often works nicely.

Once you have your pile of apples, you will need to chop them up into chunks. I own an apple peeler (The Apple Peeler, Corer and Slicer), so all I do is peel and core, then cut out anything that remains that I don't necessarily want in my apple sauce. (If you decide to get serious about cooking with apples, this is a good thing to have.)

If you're doing it with a knife, get ready for some chopping. Invite some friends over to make it all go a bit faster. You don't necessarily have to peel the apples, in fact I actually like a bit of peel in my apple sauce. You do need to core them to ensure there aren't any apple seeds in the final product, however.

The apples will turn brown once they're cut up and exposed to the air. If this bothers you, then you'll need to sprinkle them with some lemon juice to inhibit the oxidation. If you don't have lemon juice, immersing them in water kinda helps too, but everything floating on top will still turn brown. I for one don't care if they turn brown-it doesn't affect the flavor any, and I kinda like the apple butter look.

Once you fill up your pot with apple chunks, add a few cups of water, just enough to coat the bottom to keep the apples from scorching. This also facilitates the breaking down process by creating steam. It doesn't take much water because apples are already mostly water and sugar. In fact too much water can be bad, you'd end up with apple soup instead of apple sauce. If you let them cook for about half an hour, you usually can start mashing them down a bit at a time. If you have a slow cooker like me, you can simply chuck them in there, add a little bit of water to prevent sticking, and completely ignore them for 24 hours. (If you want to cook them down even further into something more like apple butter, add some sugar, and cook on low heat for a couple of days).

Once your apples are cooked down and mushy, you can decide what kind of texture you want. If you like your applesauce on the chunky side, try mashing with a potato masher. If you like it smooth (like babyfood), run it through a food processer or a blender. If you need to adjust the sweetness, now's a good time. You can use sugar or honey or any other sweetener that's not too strongly flavored. (Note, if the applesauce is going to be eaten by any infants, don't use honey.) If for some reason you used really bland apples and it tastes a bit bland, you can perk it up a bit with a little bit of lemon juice and some cinnamon.

If you want to can it, simply ladle it all into jars (quart size or smaller seems to work best) and process as usual in a boiling water bath. If you're freezing it, you can use freezer containers or freezer bags. Apple sauce is pretty good as is, but it also makes a great ice cream topping, apple pie filling (way better for you than that sugar stuff), pancake batter ingredient, or oatmeal topping.