The cow died & Homemade Apple Sauce

Did that make ya go “huh?” and scratch your head?

What on earth could she be talking about?

This cow obviously!

Muddy made sure it died….

Unfortunately last Sunday after we practiced, we forgot to take the cow down and put it up and one of the dogs (really thinking Muddy) got a hold of it and shredded it.  I haven’t seen the remains… but that’s what my mom sent me in a text.  Dad wasn’t so thrilled.

So Tuesday night they headed to JoAnn’s to get some material so mom could make a temporary cow until they got a replacement cow ordered in.

But Sunday I did remember to take some video’s of the cow and how it worked.  It’s definitely not like working a “real” cow but it works 🙂

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c2IFdg-jF4] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KEgG5sx0-s]

Then Sunday I went home and realized I had some apples in the fridge I didn’t want to spoil (aka go bad) so I made homemade apple sauce.  YUM!  It puts the store bought stuff to shame!

Here’s how I did it….

Start with washed (aka clean) apples.

And we’re going to peel them.  Now you may be saying… um you washed them why?  Maybe it’s OCD, I dunno, I washed them anyway before I peeled them though.  Maybe I didn’t want the pigs to have dirty apple peels….

Yes I feed my neighbors pigs my scraps.  Heck why not!  It beats putting them in the trash!  Plus I benefit from their pigs 🙂

Then slice them up.  

And throw them in a deep pot (although I want a deeper one!) filled with water over some heat.

Once you have them all in there I placed a lid on the pot and cooked the apples.  Cook them until the apples are soft!  Our stove is electric so I had my stove setting around 6 or 7 which is a little over medium heat.  I would say they cooked every bit of 20-30 minutes…

Then I strained mine out into a bowl because I had a bit much water still.  After I put them in the bowl I added about 2 inches of the cooked apple water to the bowl.  Then called grandma to make sure I had my measurements right… 1/2 cup sugar to 1 pint of apples.  I had about 2 pints of apples here so I added a full cup of sugar, then got my potato masher out and went to town mashing up the apples.  Now if you wanted more consistent apple sauce and it to not be chunky you can use a ricer, but 1st off that’s one thing my kitchen doesn’t have… and secondly, I kind of like the chunkier applesauce.

And boy o’ boy was it good fresh off the stove!  I took it to Sunday night dinner just because it was still warm and I’d just finished it and came home with about 1 serving left.

Now I have the 1950’s Better Homes & Garden’s Cookbook and it said to add cinnamon but I forgot that.  At Sunday night dinner though Austin asked me if it had cinnamon in it.  I said, nope, I forgot that.  They all thought it tasted like it though so maybe it was the type of apples I had, I’m not sure, but if you want, add a little cinnamon to yours 🙂