Various Applesauce Adventures

While we were staying at my parents' house, Mom, Nat, and I made a whoooooole bunch of applesauce. My gramps had picked hundreds of apples from his friend's apple trees, so we got all Becky Home Eckey. We set ourselves up in the garage - it's a sticky mess to make applesauce, so we cut down on some of the mess by making it in the garage, where there is a hose we can spray the floor with.

Nat's kids love cranking the applesauce maker thingey:

Mom has an old camp stove that we use to boil the apples:

Nat and I were having so much fun. We kept singing that song from the Disney Johnny Appleseed cartoon, the one where they list all of the things you can make with apples:

"There's apple pickles
Oh so tasty
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

Sometimes the apples would boil over, and one or two apples would fall on the garage floor and get all smooshed. We called it Apple Carnage. And then we added it to the song:

"There's Apple Carnage, nice and tasty,
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

It was funny. I love hanging out with Nat. It felt so good to be together again.

Just some of the billions of jars of applesauce we made:

It took several hours, honestly. My dad came home at lunch and saw us slaving away, and then, when he came home after work, there we still were, cranking the applesauce thingey. He said, "I have a good idea. Why don't we just BUY applesauce at the store to put in food storage? Then it won't be so much work."

"But Dad," I said, "This applesauce is practically free!"

"I promise you that I will buy you all the applesauce you could ever want for your food storage. It won't cost you a cent. So that we can forego this awful mess next year."

Sounds good to me.

Speaking of applesauce, my dear 84-year-old across-the-street neighbor, Nephi, was getting his applesauceing on at the same time my family was. He brought some over. He comes up with interesting add-ins:

I think he had put, like, raisins and coconut in it, maybe? I just....couldn't bring myself to eat it. Call me a snob.

He also brought some over that he had made three years ago. He bragged that it still tasted as fresh as the day he made it:

Um, I doubt that. Very much. That just looks like a tub of poop. I didn't taste that stuff, either. Ya gotta be careful with the stuff Nephi brings over. He often brings over gallons of store-bought juice - pomegranate, cranberry, pineapple, etc. It's so sweet of him. But, um, usually, they have expired. We just graciously accept his gifts and don't tell him that most of them are inedible or undrinkable. He really means well. He's such a sweetheart.