Preserving the Bounty: Sweet Sauce [The Cookbook]

A week ago, Madre came to visit and we canned several quarts of sweet sauce (we also did salsa and pickled peppers as well, because we had an absolutely absurd amount of tomatoes from our garden). Sauce has been on my cooking bucket list since, well, pretty much forever. It's...got a legacy in my family. Nonno was well known for his spaghetti sauce (even though I refused to eat it until I was well into my teens - it's a long and terribly odd story that I'll save as fodder for the memoir), and Bisnonna's sweet sauce is a starting point for the majority of her main dishes.

As I am not feeling well; however, I will let the pictures and madre do the talking on this one:

Sweet Sauce: [madre writes] Brown a couple onions in a little oil. Blend your tomatoes in the food processor. This will blend everything. Grandma used to put her tomatoes in really hot water, then peel the skins off and squeeze the juice and seeds out of the tomato. You do whatever method is best for you. Add a pinch of salt, sweet basil, oregano and pepper. Let it cook for a little while. Then add a can or two of paste. Add some sugar to taste. Let this cook a good while so that it thickens up. All the amounts of the ingredients depends on how many tomatoes you are using. Use your own judgment. I like to can mine. Grandma would put hers in the freezer. Here again, do what is best for you. This sauce can be used as a base for vegetable soup, spaghetti sauce, and chili. Have some fun with it.

Rhubarb Curd

I know, I know, back on the rhubarb train. It's funny...I don't think I can recall -ever- eating rhubarb even once in my childhood. Which is odd if you think about where I grew up.Rhubarb is the quintessential country spring fruit? veggie? stalk? (The definition isn't very clear), but here I am...just really discovering it for all it's magical properties. I have to wonder at the reason for this. Did somebody in my family dislike rhubarb? As often as we had strawberry pies (both homemade and bought from the ever illustrious Troyer's) and as often as strawberry is paired with rhubarb, you would think it would have come to visit every once and awhile.

It all started with the glaze, but I've been on a wild rhubarb ride ever since. I think it's that first blush of a new passion. (oh, and around these parts it's going to be another few weeks, at least, until the strawberries come in, so the old couplings are out - but the best advice is from The Kitchn blog: Don't wait for strawberries. It's May and winter was long. It's time to celebrate and enjoy rhubarb now.)

And so I did. I made their recipe for rhubarb curd. It has become the go-to toast topic around the apartment the past few weeks. It really is magical enough to eclipse peanut butter for a little while! So head on over and give the recipe a try. (Note: if I were to do it again I would cut the sugar though, so do as you see fit in that department.)

Slow Cooker Apple Butter-Sauce!

Last weekend we decided to go on an adventure:

apple picking!

It's early autumn and after a dismal crop last year, things in the area are looking up. Judging by the fact that we ended up with a full half-bushel of Macintosh apples in record time, I'd say it was a good year.

The only question was what to do with so many apples?

I scoured The Cookbook seeking apple recipes and found several, which will likely be featured over the next few weeks, but there were also a few that called for the apples to be in a little more cooked down state (apple butter or apple sauce). My mind immediately concocted a brilliant plan: instead of buying apple butter/sauce, why not make my own? Surely, I had enough apples on hand...Couldn't be too labor intensive, right?

Right on both counts!

I found the idea for making apple butter in the slow cooker on Pinterest, which was plenty exciting. Then I ran with it, creating a recipe to suit my own needs.

The hardest part for me was peeling the apples. There are amazing people on this earth who can peel an apple in one continuous loop. I am definitely not one of those people. Eventually I got all 15 apples peeled and it was easy going from there on out.

Slow Cooker Apple Butter/Sauce

Inspired by GuruToTheOutdoors  with heavy adaptations by my crazy brain

[ingredients]

15 apples (or however many you need - 15 is what filled my crockpot)

1/2 cup cane sugar

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ginger

3 tablespoons cinnamon

3 tablespoons lemon juice

[What to do]

1. Peel and core apples. Cut into cubes and add them to the crockpot.
2. Add lemon juice, stir. Then add dry ingredients, stir again.
3. Cook on low for 6 hours. Mash up with a spoon. - At this point it is thicker and more applesauce-like.
4. Continue cooking for another 2 hours. -Now we have apple butter!
5. If you like chunkier apple butter, leave as is. If you prefer a smooth consistency, blend the butter before canning.

My mixture made about 2 small and 1 regular sized jar as well as about 2 cups left over, which I intended for immediate use.