Tag: Kitchen Garden

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Living in Society

Eating Alone – Mexican Fare

Home Made Tacos

When my spouse is away, I haul a small boombox upstairs and crank the volume up. I find myself digging out old compact disks and audio cassette tapes, listening to Iowa Public Radio more, and tuning into the local classical music station. Classical music is more interesting on the radio than in other media because of the announcer. While I wouldn’t call it “going wild,” it’s as wild as I get regarding music these days.

How I prepare Mexican food is different when she is away. When cooking for two I avoid use of ingredients that contain capsaicin, a.k.a. 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide. According to Wikipedia:

Capsaicin is an active component of chili peppers, which are plants belonging to the genus Capsicum. It is a potent irritant for mammals, including humans, for which it produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact. Capsaicin and several related amides (capsaicinoids) are produced as secondary metabolites by chili peppers, likely as deterrents against eating by mammals and against the growth of fungi. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, highly pungent (i.e., spicy) crystalline solid.

It’s hot. Lots of people don’t care for it or are allergic to it, including family members.

When we are together I get my spice by adding hot sauce as a condiment. When I cook and dine alone, I’m free to add it while cooking. Mexican fare is flexible in preparation so the lack of heat while cooking has not been an issue. My process for using chili peppers continues to change. I wrote about the basics in 2019:

The recipe for hot sauce evolved over time from one Juan San Miguel explained in 1977 when we both garrisoned in Mainz, Germany. Those were days before a four-foot section of assorted hot sauces became standard in supermarkets.

I lost contact with him yet the recipe persists. It is a rare day when there is no hot sauce in the ice box.

We carried the condiment in plastic milk jugs and put it on our army rations while on maneuvers in the Fulda Gap. It made our eyes water and changed regular food into edible fire. We laughed a lot in that peace-time army… and ate sandwiches of bread and hot sauce. I continue to make it mostly the way Juan taught me. (Meditation on Hot Sauce, Oct. 20, 2019, Paul Deaton).

This week included making hot pepper paste, dehydrating Cayenne peppers for red chili flakes, blending jars of powdered hot peppers from the pantry to use in shakers, and using a fresh jalapeno when making enchiladas. I found less is more: reducing the number of preparations to just a few that will be used. October is the month to do this as hot peppers are the most abundant late harvesting vegetable. Getting all this kitchen work done while she is gone is a plus. Even I had to wear a KN-95 face mask while mixing the powdered hot peppers. I should be wearing a pair of surgical gloves yet don’t and my hands sting for several hours after preparing fresh chilies. I know I’m alive.

A typical difference when I am eating alone is taco filling. The main recipe I use is a blend of black beans, kale, onions, garlic, bell peppers, tomato sauce and Mexican oregano. When cooking alone, instead of tomato sauce, I make a sauce of dried guajillo chilies. These chilies are not that hot but when allergic to capsaicin, any amount is too much.

Enchiladas are in the refrigerator waiting to bake for dinner. Tuesday is for tacos when I’ll use fresh chilies. I am not a heat nut, yet have a more developed use of chilies grown in the garden than most Iowans. The use of chilies characterizes my kitchen-garden.

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Living in Society

Eating Alone – The Refrigerator

Refrigerator the day after my spouse left on a trip.

This week I am eating alone because my spouse left on a trip to visit her sister. The first thing to do was go through the refrigerator and study the contents.

There were two leftover servings of tofu-vegetable stir fry and a jar of chili. That’s three meals right away. I made both dishes to share for dinner, and leftovers should be equally good.

There are a dozen eggs, fluid milk, butter, sour cream, cheeses, pickles, three kinds of bread — a commercial loaf, sour dough, and locally baked burger buns. The two drawers have storage apples in one, and an array of fresh vegetables in the other. Nothing to compost here as we keep the veg moving. I need to use the last two garden eggplants soon.

The bottom drawer has loads of fresh greens, uncooked flour tortillas, and more cheese. The doors have a partly empty carton of oat milk, a gallon jug of skimmed cow’s milk, the rest of a half gallon of fresh apple cider, and countless jars of mustard, ketchup, sauces and condiments. We are well-stocked!

To sum it up, there are three easy meals of leftovers and diverse sandwich-makings. Eggplant lasagna or something similar is in the works. Tacos are always possible. I have three small heads of Romaine lettuce, so a big salad for dinner could be done. Without doing much of anything, I’m halfway through the solitary eating period. I needed to go to the grocer.

My shopping trip was typical. I spent time in the fresh fruit and vegetable section studying what was available and comparing it to what we need. I bought some grape tomatoes on special pricing, a bag of red radishes, and a bunch of green onions. I get organic celery here because celery is at the top of the list of pesticide-laden vegetables. Buying organic celery makes sense.

In the specialty cheese section I bought some Wisconsin-made Gruyère to melt on something. Next I went to the cereal aisle and added a small box of Post Grape Nuts to the cart. I had been reading about using it as a crunchy topping on salads and thought I would try it. I also got a box of store-brand Raisin Bran because it was on special pricing. (I know! Impulse purchase). I picked out a big bag of Halloween candy for trick or treaters and everything else I got was replenishing staples in the pantry.

My spouse is vegan, so the dairy is for me. That I remain an ovo-lacto vegetarian sets me on a deliberate path to separate us in eating. I learned to make delicious vegan meals we share. The difference is also part of why I sometimes cook for myself even when she is around.

So I have a plan to eat alone this week. It is essential work for the period of physical separation. Because this is no different from any other day, it suggests I eat alone often. I do.

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Living in Society

Eating Alone

Photo by Amateur Hub on Pexels.com

Most of the meals I take are eaten alone. It’s just the way my spouse and my schedules work out. I am an early riser and have coffee around 3 a.m. with breakfast a couple of hours later. Lunch is not really a meal in our house. I graze bits and nobs throughout the day, maybe warm some leftovers or make a sandwich, and keep track of calories consumed. We plan and share dinner, which usually involves shopping, food preparation, and cooking. Sometimes I cook and sometimes we both cook a meal. Until I read Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin’s book What we eat when we eat alone, I had not given much thought to eating alone.

Eating is fundamental not only to survival and health, but also to how humans organize their social lives. Eating together with others is often seen as the healthy ideal, while eating alone is highlighted as a risk factor for negative health outcomes, especially among older adults. (“The impact of eating alone on food intake and everyday eating routines: A cross-sectional study of community-living 70- to 75-year-olds in Sweden,” by Amanda Björnwall, Patricia Eustachio Colombo, et. al. Aug. 14, 2024).

Healthy ideal or not, I feel set in my ways. As I age, it seems likely I will continue to eat more meals alone than together. Well, maybe until I move to a facility where residents take all of their meals in a group setting. We increasingly don’t like talking about those institutions as we age.

My spouse is heading over to stay with her sister for a week to ten days. This will give me an opportunity to consider all that eating alone means. From the gitgo some questions come to mind.

  • Do I cook a meal or grab something already prepared?
  • Are cooking alone and eating alone the same thing?
  • Why is what I eat different when eating alone?
  • What role do restaurants and food outlets play in eating alone?
  • Eating in the car. What’s that about?
  • How do I shop differently to eat alone?
  • What role do leftovers play in eating alone?

This could be a rich field of inquiry. As of this writing, I don’t know where I am going with this. Stay tuned to find out.

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Kitchen Garden

2025 Garden – Wrapped!

Garden with seven plots assigned letters for this post. Photo is from late October 2022.

Garlic will soon be in the ground, which means gardening season is officially wrapping up. What a year it was — easily the most productive garden I’ve had. There’s nothing left to do except pick the occasional, persistent leaf of kale and live from the pantry and freezer for a while. Time for a quick recap of how 2025 went. I labeled the plots on this October 2022 photo so you can follow along.

Plot A is a utility storage plot and has been at least since 2022. If I were to build a garden shed, it would go here. Two composters work here and the rest is a weedy mess with a lingering fence. Some spring flower bulbs I brought from Indiana mark the northern edge. There are a few Iris hidden in the weeds. The original Iris bulbs came from my in-law’s home soon after we moved here. The idea is to remove them and replant in front of the house. This was a garlic patch one year. The remains of garlic bulbs grow year after year. I harvest some of the scapes and let them go. The two oak trees I planted from acorns aren’t big now but eventually will be. That will consume nutrients from the nearby soil. I am leaving them both for now. The rest of the plot needs a good clearing when I have energy.

Plot B is a problem plot. The last time I planted the whole thing in a single crop was garlic harvested in 2024. The problem is when I first dug it I planted a row of tree seedlings. I got so busy at work I managed to transplant only two of them and a locust tree grew to be very large. It blew over in the Aug. 10, 2020 derecho, leaving a stump. This year I used the stump site as a burn pile in hope the stump would also be burned. I did plant a covered row on the west edge. In it grew some of the best lettuce and herbs I’ve yet had from our garden. When I clean it up, this is where next year’s leafy green vegetable plot will be.

Plot C is a large, main plot. This year I grew bell peppers, eggplant, multiple summer and winter squash varieties, four varieties of cucumbers, celery and green beans. Conditions were great for all of these. I made regular trips, sometimes twice a week, to local food pantries with extra squash and cucumbers. I restocked the freezer with grated zucchini and yellow squash for soup. I diced celery and froze it in pint bags, also for soup. I pickled enough cucumbers to last for a while. Green beans were particularly abundant with enough to freeze some. Next year, this plot returns to tomatoes. It is just the right size to hold my 70 cages.

Plot D was fallow this year, except for a 4×20 fenced area for hot peppers. Like everything else this year, the peppers grew in abundance. I piled grass clippings on the rest of the plot for use as garlic mulch. Tuesday I cleared all the clippings and next comes turning over the soil and tilling. I hope to plant 125 or so cloves this week.

Plot E was tomatoes. There are only three plots big enough to hold all of my tomato cages, plots C, D and E. The spring decision to plant more Granadero and Amish Paste plum tomatoes was solid. I made my canning plan for two dozen pints of sauce and had plenty for fresh eating. As a byproduct, I get a tomato liquid I can and use when making soup. The cherry tomatoes were abundant. I tried dehydrating cherry tomatoes and San Marzano plum tomatoes. The resulting nuggets have a rich tomato flavor and I can use them in a number of dishes or eat them for a snack. I plan more of that next year. As in recent years, I took the extra tomatoes to local food pantries.

Plot F was mostly leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. This plot is a mainstay and it reflects how our eating habits changed. In spring I froze all the greens we need for the coming year. The quality was exceptional. During spring, I also make and can vegetable broth using greens and scraps from the garden. This is mostly for soup making and cooking rice. I harvested fennel, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage here. Greens will continue to produce past first frost, well into November or December. The most popular greens I give away are collards. My favorites are kale and chard. A person cannot have enough stored cabbage.

Plot G was this year’s garlic crop. Because I had COVID last year during garlic planting time, it didn’t get into the ground until spring. There were more smaller cloves, yet I got enough big ones to use as seed, and there are plenty of decent-sized heads to use in the kitchen.

The two small trees in the photo are Zestar! and Crimson Crisp apple trees. This year was the first they produced enough to do something with the fruit. The pear and other apple trees are across the yard and they had a banner year as well.

So that’s the big picture of my 2025 garden. I can’t wait to get the garlic planted and take it easy for a while.

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Kitchen Garden

Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple cider vinegar fermenting on the counter on Oct. 10, 2025.

On Friday, I finished the last jar of apple cider vinegar. It’s been a big apple year, and it’s not over yet. Red Delicious still hang on the tree, and three bushels wait by the furnace. The remaining apples are for snacking or recipes like applesauce cake and cider. We don’t drink much cider, but the stuff from the backyard is every bit as good as what you’d get at an orchard or the store.

In 2013, a neighbor introduced me to home vinegar making. I’ve written about it half a dozen times on this blog and it is really simple. Here is a handy process outline:

  • Have home grown apples or know someone who does. It is too expensive to buy apples from a retailer for vinegar.
  • Apple selection is important. I don’t spray my trees, or do much of anything to grow bigger apples. I use Red Delicious apples for cider vinegar because I have so many of them in good years. They are also sweet with plenty of sugars for fermentation. After they ripen, I harvest a large quantity and sort them into categories: near perfect fruit (for refrigerator storage), best (fresh eating), seconds (culinary uses), gnarly apples with some usable flesh, and wildlife food. I find the gnarly apples make excellent cider because in paring them to cut away the bad spots, more apple skin goes into the juicer and gives the liquid a darker, more desirable color.
  • Equipment. My toolbox includes a Juiceman Juicer (the kind advertised on television back in the ancient days when I viewed the medium), a paring knife and a chef’s knife with large cutting board, two large Rubbermaid plastic pitchers, two different cone funnels, a large slotted spoon for skimming apple scum after juicing, a basting tool, and ten half gallon Mason jars. Vinegar will ferment on its own yet to speed up the process, I add an eighth of a teaspoon of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast, used primarily in wine-making. While not really hardware, it is a tool.
  • Set up work stations. You will need five: an apple sorting area (mine’s near the furnace), an apple washing station, a cutting station, a juicing station, and a fermentation station. Once fermentation begins, I have a shelf in a dark pantry where it finishes.
  • I did not keep time records. From the washing station to the fermentation station took roughly 12-15 hours to produce five half gallons over six daily shifts.
  • Make the vinegar.

Here are some notes.

  • Things go more quickly if larger apples are used. In a home garden that is not always possible. As mentioned, I use gnarly apples which takes more time.
  • Do a lot of work at each station. For example, cut and pare a large pile of apples at a time. Accumulate a big bowl or two of cut apples before juicing them. Focusing on a single task for a longer duration seems easier.
  • Keep the juicer clean. Stop juicing as many times as needed to ensure the solids are not backing up and blocking something.
  • The liquid coming from the juicer has four main components. A buoyant pulp that should be skimmed off and composted before pouring the extract into the Rubbermaid pitchers through a cone funnel. Allow the liquid to rest in the pitchers until it separates. There will be three layers: the top is grated bits of apple skins and flesh, the middle is the amber cider, and some apple particles sink to the bottom. If I have a quart or less left over at the end of a shift, I put that in a Mason jar and let it separate overnight.
  • Prepare the jars. Pour out what’s left in them — a mix of last year’s vinegar and the mother. I always keep a little vinegar in the jars to protect the mother until I’m ready for a new batch. Once the jars are clean and dry, place some of the mother back in and pour enough of last year’s vinegar to cover it.
  • I use the baster to get through the top layer to the cider in the middle. One baster at a time I transfer the liquid to the half gallon jars. When the jar is half filled, I add the one eighth teaspoon of yeast so it gets mixed in adequately.
  • Leave at least one inch of headspace in the jars. Then cover them with a cotton cloth secured by a rubber band.
  • Now we wait for fermentation to begin. it won’t take long, within a hour or so. As it begins, make sure there is enough headspace. Every batch is a little different depending on the fruit. I give fermentation a couple of days on the counter to get started. A reason I leave them on the counter a couple of days is so I don’t forget they are active. Once you finish this step they can be moved to pantry.

If I miss a few years, I have plenty of vinegar stored in one liter bottles to last. Like with anything, I use the oldest vinegar first. Pro tip: Clean all the equipment, especially the juicer, every day at the end of the shift. You will be glad you did.

Gnarly apples make the best vinegar.
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Kitchen Garden

Hot Pepper Paste

Hot pepper paste.

The fall abundance of hot peppers found its resolution in jars of homemade pepper paste. This thick, tangy blend of peppers, garlic, sugar, and salt—simmered in a vinegar-and-water solution—became the perfect answer to the bags of jalapeño, serrano, Santo Domingo, and Anaheim peppers piling up in the refrigerator. The cayenne peppers were easier: they went to the dehydrator and became red pepper flakes. Yet this hot pepper paste, the result of weeks of simmering, blending, and refining, was a more patient project—one that bottled the heat of summer for the cold months ahead. It may be a permanent resolution of fall pepper abundance.

As hot peppers came from the garden into the kitchen in late summer I tried things. First, I made a quart of salsa to put on Mexican-style fare. Next I sliced jalapeño peppers and pickled them in home made apple cider vinegar. Two quarts of pickled peppers stored in the refrigerator will provide condiments for a full year. Then I began taking excess to the food pantry. I made cold pickled serranos and jalapeños. This was only the beginning of the crop. What next?

After stemming and slicing the peppers in half, I brought each batch to a boil in a mix of 1½ cups 5% white vinegar and 1 cup water. Once boiling, I turned the heat down to a simmer and let them go for about 20 more minutes. At first, I strained away most of the vinegar-water solution and put the peppers in a blender and pulsed until they were pureed. This produced a thick paste to use on tacos, or as an ingredient to replace fresh hot peppers when the season is over. I felt I was on to something.

As harvest continued I tried different pepper blends and moisture contents. A number of experimental jars collected in the refrigerator. The concept seemed good, yet our refrigerator is already too full to handle the abundance. I decide to try water bath canning the product and learned about pH.

I made the final product with all but a few reserved hot peppers from the refrigerator and the solution described. To that I added six ounces of garlic cloves, generous tablespoons of sugar and kosher salt. Once simmered, I put the mix into the blender, liquid and all. The coloring is due to jalapeño peppers that ripened to red. I returned the puree to the cooking pot and took all the jars of earlier experiments from the refrigerator and stirred them in. Once warm, I put the paste into pint Mason jars and water bath canned them.

I don’t know how others deal with excess hot peppers, yet I don’t know how else I would do it. Experimentation is an important part of my kitchen-garden. This hot pepper paste is something I will use and probably use up before next year’s harvest. Everything about the process makes life better.

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Kitchen Garden

Scion of Hawkeye

Red Delicious apples picked in early October.

The Iowa story of the Red Delicious apple is best told on the Stark Bro’s website. What stands out to me is that 1893, the year of the first International New Fruit Show where Jesse Hiatt of Peru, Iowa exhibited his chance seedling, the Hawkeye apple, also saw the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Exposition embodied the late nineteenth century’s drive to catalog, classify, and display the world’s cultures, species, and artifacts—a hallmark of the Age of Imperialism.

Clarence Stark was not a fan of the Ben Davis apple widely planted in Iowa and the Midwest at that time. While Ben Davis stood up to winter, grew almost anywhere, and did not bruise easily, it lacked flavor. Stark literally got on his horse and went out to find better. When he found the Hawkeye at the New Fruit Show, he immediately liked it. Somehow Hiatt’s association with it had gotten lost. The two came together at the second show.

Clarence was elated. He could not get to Iowa fast enough. The Stark brothers made the trip immediately and bought the sole rights from Hiatt, named the apple “Stark® Delicious” (only after naming ‘Golden Delicious’ in 1914 did it become ‘Red Delicious’) and secured a registered trademark. (A Delicious Discovery: Red Delicious Apple, Stark Bro’s Nurseries and Orchards).

That Red Delicious was first found in Iowa is the reason I planted it in my backyard in April 1995. It has been a good tree. Even with large parts of it damaged in wind storms and the Aug. 10, 2020 derecho, it produces an amazing amount of fruit every other year. If Stark Bro’s propagated it to the extent flavor was diminished after adapting the cultivar to mass markets, the tree in my backyard continues to produce great-tasting fruit. I’d say they were delicious, but that would be too punny.

I am thankful to have planted this Red Delicious tree 30 years ago. It came from a time of robber barons seeking to buy anything of value and profit from it. To a minor extent, Stark Bro’s did that as well. As the apple business changes, stores are less reliant on Red Delicious. Because of the flavor, I wouldn’t trade my tree for anything.

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Living in Society

Further Thoughts on AI

Milkweed gone to seed.

On Oct. 1, the machine at ChatGPT told me I had used my allowance of queries for my free account. It was fine. It offered me a lesser quality query until my account reset. I logged out instead and quickly found other things to do.

After re-reading my post about using AI, which includes an essay I asked the machine to write, I decided it was a good call to refrain from using ChatGPT in my autobiography. The main issue is it relies on what is available on the internet on a given topic. Because my autobiography is being written from journals, photographs, memories and other in-real-life documentation, such information is not available for the machine to read. It will produce a present-biased, internet-derived account about whatever I ask about my life. That is not what I want in this project.

While it did a reasonable job drafting something from the contents of this blog, it only knows me that way and that is a deficiency that cannot be easily corrected. For example, I asked the machine to write a brief autobiography of me. It’s response tells the story: “I couldn’t find enough reliable public information to write a full, detailed 1,000-word biography of Paul Deaton of Iowa.” This was despite my essay of that name, which lives on this blog and is my most popular post since I began in 2007. Either the machine is lazy, or it has programming that discourages this type of query. This discovery of the limits of ChatGPT is of value.

What can I use ChatGPT or another AI program to do? I see three applications based on asking these questions of the machine.

Give me ideas in how to use ChatGPT as diarist. I have been journaling since 1974 and the evolution of styles and content is striking. They developed over time. Naturally the machine wants to talk about events in my journal all day so it can learn as much as possible about me. I won’t do that, yet the occasional query can help me find direction in that kind of writing. It also made these suggestions for how to use the machine: “The key is deciding whether you want me to be: An analyst (finding themes and patterns); A recorder (storing entries); An editor (shaping them into narratives); or A mirror (asking questions back).” Even though I am alone when journaling, I don’t need a machine partner with which to interact.

What are some ideas for vegetarian and vegan enchiladas? Using ChatGPT to determine what to cook and eat seems solid. I entered on-hand ingredients and the machine suggested a specific recipe that used them. It provided grouping of ideas by flavor-type, such as hearty and savory, bright and fresh, protein-rich, toppings and finishing touches. So often, my ideas are pulling out a familiar cookbook and paging through it. AI could be an alternate way of figuring out what’s for dinner. There is value in that.

What are some ways to balance household work for today? I also entered tasks for the day. Personal productivity is important and the machine gave me useful ideas on how to structure my day. Because we are creatures of habit, we need to break out of what we do to improve how much we get done in a day. AI did not hesitate to tell me I scheduled too much to do, suggesting tasks that could be done tomorrow. It also changed how certain tasks were scheduled in the day, for example, moving cooking to the afternoon and spreading meal prep throughout the day. Going forward, I expect to use AI to help restructure how I spend my time. It may get to the point where I’m satisfied with how my new daily schedule is going. If so, then I will step away from AI for a while. I do know I was productive but exhausted by mid afternoon the first day I tried using an AI planner. This despite more scheduled rest and recovery time throughout the day.

It seems important we get AI out of our system. Like with everything, moderation of use seems essential.

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Kitchen Garden

Harvesting Fall Greens

Kale washing duty on Sept. 30, 2025.

On the last day of September I walked through the greens plot and picked what looked good. It included this kale plus a generous amount of collards and chard. While it was challenging to push through the tall foxtail weeds, at the end of season I leave them so small birds can light on them and eat the seeds. I washed and stored everything we did not eat for supper in the refrigerator. Wednesday morning for breakfast, I cooked and ate a bag of collards picked on August 30. Cruciferous vegetables store well in the refrigerator, although the oldest should be used first. They truly are a mainstay ingredient in our kitchen garden.

On some days I sit at my desk without an idea of where I will go with the day’s writing. I do sit down, though. Perhaps that is a sign of habit and discipline of the kind required by a writer. I am mostly sure I will ground what I write in some kind of local reality, like the greens harvest I just finished.

As I have written before, this blog is a way to get my writing juices flowing. I keep the posts short so they can be finished early in the day and I can move on to whatever creative endeavor is next. As fall progresses, that is usually a couple of hours writing and editing my autobiography. It also includes other work around the property. Writing is the foundation of my current life.

Writing in public is distinguished from producing a journal, email, or other private writing. This blog serves that purpose and because I get feedback in the form of comments, contact from people I know via telephone, text, or email. Each post is a work in progress after it is posted. While most posts remain unmodified, the conversations I have result in changing wording or changing how I think about a topic. My writing here is the public facing part of my life. It is essential.

Some call my writing political, yet I don’t know about that. When I write about politics, my personal experience and perspective are adjacent to it. It is better to criticize the administration about inflation by talking about how much the cost of a home-brewed cup of coffee increased this year than talk in vague generalities influenced by journalism and social media. In the end, political topics must necessarily be grounded in this place I call home to be meaningful.

I didn’t know I would be harvesting greens on Tuesday. I didn’t know how far I would get in the apple harvest this week. These are pragmatic unknowns with which a writer lives every day. Through practicing the craft of writing, without presumptions of what it should be, we can get better at it. That’s something I hope I am doing.

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Kitchen Garden

Varietal Applesauce

CC = Crimson Crisp; E = Earliblaze; RD = Red Delicious; Z = Zestar!

With the first big harvest from the Zestar! and Crimson Crisp trees, I decided to make applesauce from each variety. When I finished putting up 36 pints, I organized them to make this variety case. It will be interesting to see how the distinctive flavors mature over time. I never heard of anyone doing varietal applesauce, where each jar is the same variety of apple. So this may be unique to our household. That’s what a gardener can have when they work at it.

There is a daily, recurring task in my planner to “Make Applesauce.” Once I finish the planned amount, I will change it to “Make Cider Vinegar.” I’m still working off a pantry shelf full of apple butter so I don’t need more this year.

The first step was to pick and sort the apples, which I did a week or so ago. I sorted nine bushels of Red Delicious apples into saucers and juicers, and stacked them in crates next to the furnace. The race is on to process them before they go soft.

Apples awaiting processing.

Each day I take the tub that approximates one batch of applesauce, fill it up from the bins, and set it next to the stove. When I’m working on apples, the day starts with washing them as well as I can and air drying them on a towel. It is important to use a little elbow grease when cleaning them and make them a bit shiny. This removes the black spots that sometimes develop.

Next I cut them lengthwise in quarters and cut out the seeds. At this stage, it is important to remove as little of the core as possible since that is where pectin forms. We want pectin as a thickener. While I’m at it, I cut any bad spots and compost them.

I used to leave the seeds in, yet over time, I decided not to cook them and potentially release amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside composed of cyanide and sugar. A little cyanide can kill a human, however, it is unlikely enough cyanide is present if seeds are not crushed. Removing the seeds before cooking is overly cautious, but nothing in terms of flavor or workflow is lost by doing so.

When it is apple season there is always a form of apple juice around. I put about 12 ounces in the bottom of the cooking vessel to prevent scorching and create steam to cook the whole pot. Water is released from the flesh while cooking and it turns into a thick, delicious apple drink which I separate and store in the refrigerator.

Apples trimmed, cored, and ready to cook.

How long to cook the apples? Like anything enough but not too much. I stir the pot once and then when the apples on top begin to soften I turn the heat off and let them sit on the stove for at least an hour. This finishes the cooking without losing all of the goodness. It also allows them to reabsorb some of the apple juice.

Next, I use a large stainless steel cone strainer to separate the apples from the liquid. I put all of apples from the pot in there and cover it with a plate for at least an hour, sometimes more. Because I use applesauce mostly for recipes and baking, I don’t need a lot of moisture in it. If a person wanted to eat applesauce from a dish, or use it as baby food, the moisture level could be adjusted. I put my strainer in a large Rubbermaid pitcher to catch the liquid. It makes it easy to pour it into a Mason jar.

After the liquid is drained, I put small quantities in a different cone strainer and with a pestle, press the flesh out through the tiny perforations. I keep adding small amounts until it has all been pressed and what is left in the strainer is dry skins. This process saves the time of peeling apples. Sometimes I want chunky applesauce, so I peel the apples before cooking and then use a potato masher to break them up in the cooking pot.

The final step is to place the sauce in clean Mason jars with a new lid and water bath can them. When they have been canned, I loosen the ring, and if there is evidence of leakage before sealing, I wash it off so the ring doesn’t get corroded. If I run short of rings, I’ll store the jars with lid only. There has never been a problem.

My process is intended to make enough applesauce for two years, in between big harvests of the Red Delicious tree. I might adjust that if the other trees produce more apples.

I didn’t mention, but should, I take time to clean the kitchen and do dishes before getting started. I enjoy watching wildlife eat fallen apples through the window behind the sink and consider what a blessing having apple trees can be.