How to Make Applesauce

First, taste the apples to make sure that they're good.

Next, wash the apples. Yes, tasting should alway come before washing!

Check and see which apples still are dirty. Count them, if you want to.

Supervise the apple peeling. Try turning the crank a little but only with Mommy's help.

Tasting the cinnamon stick is essential to the best applesauce. Once you've tasted, add it to the pot.

Stir.

Let it cook for a while and ask Mommy to mash it up later.
(Note: I decided to add in the peels because the peeler I was using took off a lot of the flesh with it. I later had to fish them all out. And I forgot to take a picture of the final product.)

CSA Fun

I've been having a lot of fun cooking up my CSA veggies recently and taking pictures of them. It all started with this penguin:

who was almost too cute to cut up into ratatouille:

which cooked down a ton and was very yummy!

Here's a cabbage and potato soup I made with yellow potatoes. It smelled delicious--bacon, caraway seeds, and cabbage sauteed together. But I think the recipe called for too much stock because it didn't taste nearly as mouthwateringly yummy as it smelled.

This pizza earned a great compliment. I was asked by the man of the house, "Why did you buy pizza?" My reply was, "Thank you." The sauce and the basil were from the CSA and a friend's garden. The dough was homemade but everything else came from the store. Gone in a day, of course.

Cranberry beans are so beautiful but mysterious. Where do the colors go when they cook? These went into a more flavorful cabbage and pork stew that was less photogenic, however, so not included.

Recent Developments

Since my last post, E. has started crawling! Not very fast but she does get on all fours and go places, rather than scooting around on her bum. She also has spent at least one nap time sitting up and playing in her crib instead of sleeping. I thought these new skills were supposed to make her more tired!

She's also become a bit more persnickety about her food. I made some delicious pear zucchini soup the other day (sounds strange, maybe but it's delicious). We had it for lunch and she liked the first few bites but then refused to eat it from the spoon. Refused to the point of flinging the full spoon off the high chair. So, I put some pieces of bread in the soup and she happily ate those herself, very messily. I then got the bright idea to clean up her mess while she was eating and she leaned over and grabbed my hair with her soupy fingers!

I think I'm learning from all of this that I can't get too comfortable with any one way of doing things because soon enough she'll change on me. The reverse is also true--if I don't like how things are going, I just need to wait a bit and they'll change by necessity. For example, when E. was first born, I had trouble cooking because she always needed to eat or be held or changed or something. Later, she was happy to be in the swing while I cooked. But then that didn't work so I had to have her on the kitchen floor. Next, she would only stay in her high chair while I cooked. Now, she's liable to wreck havoc wherever I put her in the kitchen so I'm not sure how to cook. But I guess that will change too at some point.

Reading and Eating

So I've been having lots of fun pureeing food recently.  I started with squash (acorn and butternut).  Yesterday was sweet potato.  She's also been eating banana but that doesn't require a food processor.  There hasn't been anything so far that E. doesn't eat but then she loves anything that goes in her mouth, even the liquid vitamins.  

I've also been enjoying reading Babybug and some board books to her.  She usually flaps her arms at the pages but this time she combined her love of books with her love for food!

Tonight's CSA adventure

Appey shock!

This is what my grandfather called it when he was a little boy. The CSA has been kicking my butt with fruit recently so I decided to fight back before my fridge started turning into a science experiment. Inspired by R., I'll include the recipe:

4 lbs apples (with a few pears mixed in to make 4 lbs)
1/2 a lemon
2 pieces of cinnamon
1/2 cup apple juice

Cut fruit into eighths and core but don't peel. Cut lemon into 2 pieces and bring everything to a boil. Then cook until properly mushy--that took me about 1 hour give or take. Then push through a sieve to remove skins, lemon, and cinnamon. The recipes I looked at suggested adding 1/4 cup brown sugar afterwards but it tasted so good I didn't add any. I do think having a food mill thingy like I vaguely remember using in my nursery school would have come in handy at the end but the wooden spoon/sieve combo does the trick and works out your forearm!

I don't know why I never take pictures of the final product (see borscht post below) but it is yummy! It was probably 10-12 apples and 2 pears and it ended up with the middle sized bowl from the borscht pictures mostly full of applesauce. I'm thinking about taking some in to school to have my city kids taste something beyond Motts but I don't know if R. Z. will let me! Maybe he wants it all to himself!

More CSA Treats

Borscht ingredients (clockwise from left): beets, red cabbage, carrots. Yes, those multicolored things are some very cool carrots! Not pictured: kielbasa, onion, garlic and other things I've forgotten. Hurray for the food processor!