Criss-cross-applesauce

Autumn has come to the PNW. It was colder today, with a fair amount of rain. Charlie-cat was busy trying to find warm spots all over the house. (He's currently in his favorite place, curled up on the back of the sofa.) And I mostly stayed in to do various household-related tasks.

One of those tasks was taking care of some apples. I bought a bag of slightly imperfect apples from the Used Food section of the QFC a while back, and they were getting to a stage of flavor development best described as "wizened," so I needed to do something with them fast. That something turned out to be pressure-cooker applesauce, and it also turned out to be super easy.

Peel, core and cut up apples (welp, that was the hardest part). Throw 'em in the Instant Pot insert along with a half-cup of water, a tiny sprinkle of salt, and some cinnamon and cardamom. (I could have also added some lemon juice, but I didn't have any... and maybe some sweetener, but these apples were plenty sweet enough on their own... so out of necessity I kept it simple.) Clamp it down, cook it on high pressure for 5 minutes, let the pressure drop naturally 5 minutes, then vent the rest of the way. I zapped the cooked apples with an immersion blender, et voilà, homemade applesauce.

It's easy to forget because it's ubiquitous, but store-bought applesauce is a convenience food. In my 1950-reprint Betty Crocker cookbook, any recipe that calls for applesauce first directs the cook to make some, indicating whether it should be thin or thick, plain or spiced, etc. for the recipe. And because it's so often bought instead of made, it's also easy to forget that homemade applesauce is delicious in a way that store-bought applesauce will never be. I grew up with home-canned applesauce made from the sweet-tart Gravenstein apples growing in my auntie's back yard, sweetened and spiced perfectly, and it's spoiled me for life. (It's also why I add cardamom to my applesauce because, hello, YUM.) Tonight's batch of homemade sauce was made with all sweet apples, so it doesn't have the complex flavor or the little tart kick that my auntie's applesauce had, but even so it's still better-tasting than 90% of the bland, watery, mass-produced gunk at the grocery store.

And now I have applesauce to make my great-grandma's chocolate applesauce fruitcake! Um, or not.