Picking Apples and Pink Applesauce

We picked apples this weekend!

Alyssa won the biggest apple award. 

Issac found an apple that a deer had sampled.  I love that he got such a kick out of that little discovery. 

We picked 75 pounds of Ida Red apples.  Ida Reds are great eating apples, good for baking and you can keep them for months if you keep them in the fridge.  But we like Ida Reds because they make perfectly pink applesauce.  Pink applesauce was the first family tradition we started when the kids came to live with us.  There were a lot of changes they did not understand when they came to live with us, but they understood food.

So, today we are making pink applesauce.  It's really easy to make.  The board of ingredients does not get any easier with three simple ingredients.  Look at those beautiful apples.  You need a lemon, some sugar and Ida Red Apples.  That funny looking thing on the board is a food mill.  I love my vintage food mill.  This was my mother-in-laws food mill and it is exactly like the one my mom had when I was a kid.  It's the best food mill ever.  Trust me.  

Core and chop the apples.  DO NOT PEEL THE APPLES!!!  The beautiful red skins is where we are going to get our beautiful pink color from. 

Into a big pot they go. 

Add a bit of water to the pot.  I would say about 1/4 of an inch in the bottom of the pot would be a good amount of water.

Add the lemon juice.

Cover the pot and bring the water to a boil.  Then reduce the heat to medium low and remove the cover.  You want the water to evaporate while the apples cook and get mushy.   Stir the apples occasionally so they do not stick to the bottom of the pot and burn.  

Cook the apples until they look like this.  You want them mushy and colorful.

Set your food mill over a bowl so you can make the applesauce.

Add a few ladles of apple pulp to the food mill and start turning. 

Turn the food mill handle clock-wise until the apple pulp has been pushed though the holes in the bottom and all you have left is the apple peels. 

Spin the handle counter-clockwise to scrap the peels off the bottom.  Those can go into the compost pile.

What you get is a beautiful, pink apple pulp.  Look at that color!  No food coloring needed.

Add sugar to the apple pulp while the pulp is still hot.  You want the warm pulp to melt the sugar.  Add the sugar to taste.  Some apples are sweeter than others so an exact amount of sugar to apple pulp is nearly impossible to pre-determine.

Voila!