Two days ago, while listening to a book about William Smith and the first geologic map of anything (Bath, in case you're curious), I decided to try my hand at applesauce.
Normally, I would not do this. Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be. However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze. Including the apples. Which then became not good for munching or salads. Very good for cooking down to bits with spices.
So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator! What are the odds.
Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.
Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples. The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own. I use force. (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water. It isn't lying. It is very tempting to say that it's lying. Resist the temptation. Fight the Borg within. Trust the knowledge of your elders. One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths. Or eighths. Or rhomboids.
I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove. which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end. It needs love. And an overhaul. I have Brillo pads. I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them.
The water boiled very quickly. And then didn't stop boiling. Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required. It boiled on. I found my potato masher. And I mashed the apples.
I love my potato masher. Truly. I don't know if my parents know that I have it. It is a combination potato masher - cudgel. In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark. None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes.
Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge. They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way. This is where the similarities end. Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time. Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating. Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat. You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge. I only stirred fudge once a year one time. Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge. And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke. Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.
The apples got mashed. I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush? If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush. I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification. It's distracting.
In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly. Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg. and I added cloves. It is winter. If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves. It's my new rule about winter cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.
It came out fine. It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now. I haven't had any of it.
I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.
Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.
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