I decided to start my Sauce-sational Applesauce Experiment with the MacIntosh Apples.  As you’ve all heard, we have a five month old (six months on the 28th – WOW – time goes by fast!) and she’s starting to eat food.  What can be better than making her some delicious applesauce – no sugar or preservatives added!? I didn’t want to have to put the sauce through a food mill so I decided to start with the MacIntosh – an apple that mushes when cooked.  I put the Mac’s through my Apple Machine (peeler, corer, slicer).  They were a bit difficult to put through the machine – it seemed like the peels kept getting jammed in the peeler portion so I had lots of skin still left on my cored and sliced apples.  I could have just peeled the skin that was still on by hand but I decided to make a Taffy Apple Cake at the same time.  Then – the portion of the apples with the skin still on went in there (we could deal with it…) and I put the skin-free apples into the saucing crock pot.  I left the apples in the crock pot, on low, stirring whenever I came upstairs for a break from donut making for four hours.  At that time I had a nice smooth sauce (the chunks you see easily break down when you mush with a spoon).  
Time for the taste test! 
DELICIOUS!  A wonderful smooth sauce – I personally prefer my sauce chunky though, so if this wasn’t for Pip I probably would have mixed some other apples that kept their shape (we’ll find out which ones do this as I continue my experiment).  The flavor was fantastic though.  Slightly tart but still plenty sweet (remember I’m a sweet apple eater typically).  It did not make my jaw tingle and too me – that’s fantastic. 
What did Pip think?  She LOVES it!  She gobbles it down!  If there are other foods she’s not that into (carrots), I just add a little sauce and it goes right down the hatch with no fight. 

Last night Jared called his parents to let them know "I picked my first bushel of apples...MacIntosh are in my truck." That's right! Apple season has officially begun with the first of the MacIntosh becoming available at the store. This first week or so we'll just be offering 1/2 pecks and pecks but bushels will soon be available for purchasing. Just give us a call to reserve yours!

Two other new varieties were picked last night as well...Wealthy and Jonamacs. We only have a bushel of each of those so far but we'll continue to get more in this next week or so.

Hope to see you at the store!