Happiness is...a full pantry

This weekend I finished the last of the season's food preservation. There are few things as rewarding as hearing the *plink* of a bottle top sealing, and then looking no further than our pantry shelves for good things in shiny bottles to eat!

Here's our bounty of bottles from this year: tomatoes, pears, orange-spiced pear butter, cherry almond glaze, and most recently I tried a new applesauce recipe that is super yummy so I'm sharing the recipe. You roast it in the oven, so there's no peeling, stirring or hovering over the pot to prevent it from sticking and burning. I usually buy unsweetened applesauce, but this recipe calls for a little brown sugar. I followed the recipe amounts except for the apples. I used a lasagne pan, which is larger than the 9x13 in the recipe, and I loaded it up to the top, so I figure I tripled the amount of apples so the sweetness is very minimal. I also used Golden Delicious apples since I had a 25-pound box. They are sweeter than the varieties the recipe calls for so they need less sugar anyway. Next time I might throw in a few Jonagolds to give it a nice rosy color. I love using my hand-crank food mill, which I don't get to do often. Anyway, here's the recipe:

Roasted Applesauce

1/4 c. water

6 TB packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Pinch of coarse salt

2 TB unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

3 pounds small assorted apples, such as Gala, McIntosh or Fuji

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine water, sugar, lemon juice and salt in a 9x13 baking dish. Scatter butter pieces over mixture and tope with apples. Cover with foil and roast until apples are very soft, 30 to 40 minutes. Working in batches, pass apple mixture through the medium disk of a food mill and into a bowl.

If you're stopping here, add cinnamon and other desired spices and serve warm, at room temperature or chilled. Applesauce can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days. I hot packed the applesauce into quart jars and processed them for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Happy Harvest everyone!