I'm Early... Or Late

Thanks to reader, Cheryl, who left the suggestion on A Confession, I have been thinking about cooking pork and sauerkraut with some of our applesauce.

Looking up recipes on the internet, I found that this is a traditional New Year's meal for the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Cheryl said it was great for fall, and it sure sounds ideal for this time of year to me.  So, instead of New Year's, it's Happy Fall to us!

Of course, all the recipes I found were not exactly the same.  I mostly followed the Crock Pot Pork and Sauerkraut recipe from Food.com, but was also influenced by some of the comments written there and other recipes...Plus a little free-wheeling of my own.

In my 6 1/2-quart crockpot, I started with 4 pounds of pork roast, 1/2 onion, sliced (not in the recipe), spiced with black pepper and garlic powder, a sprinkle of fennel instead of the recommended caraway, and covered in 2 pounds of sauerkraut. (Some recipes said the caraway was essential, but I can't stand the stuff.  Some commenters mentioned they used cumin or fennel instead.) The instructions say to include the liquid, but I just couldn't put all that salt in, so poured what I could (without trying too hard) from the jar and added some water back in before putting it all on the pork.

Then I mixed about 3/4 cup of applesauce (more than twice what the recipe said), 2 or 3 Tablespoons of spicy brown mustard (not in the recipe at all), and 1/4 cup of brown sugar, very loosely packed, since some of the comments mentioned the 1/4 cup called for made the dish too sweet.  I poured this over the sauerkraut.


When I checked the recipe, I noticed I was supposed to have put the applesauce on the meat, then the sauerkraut, with the brown sugar sprinkled on top.  So I worked the applesauce mixture into the sauerkraut, as an adjustment, hoping it would work out about the same.








Because the recipe says it would serve 6, and I wanted it to go further, I added 2 mondo (reference to their giant size, not a particular type) sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes seem, to me, a natural choice with these other ingredients, but the traditional meal is served with mashed potatoes.




I thought I'd have to cut the meat into chunks, but with just a turn of the meat fork, the tender meat just shredded.  The sweet potato was a good call... Next time I'll try the cumin, and add chunks of apple and maybe some carrots and/or golden beets.  The sauerkraut is subtle, so while I wished for more of that flavor, Prince Inventive, who isn't a fan still detected it. I will go ahead and add the full strength liquid next time, as it could've used more salt.

I LOVE those days when I'm able to get dinner cooking by 8 AM and not have to think about it again until time to enjoy it.  This night, we were happy to fill up a bowl and sit down together to watch the Seahawks battle the Cardinals.  :-D

31 Days at The Nesting Place

Butter Up

Remember that ungainly, gallon-sized ZipLoc bag of applesauce?  --The storage option I thought was a bad idea, because I didn't think we'd ever use a gallon of applesauce at once?  Well, problem solved.  For this, the gallon bag was even a good idea, since it stored just the right amount.

My mill-loaning friend, Ch, gave me this recipe as a suggestion for 'using up' some applesauce.  I had never made apple butter.  You can probably imagine that as an applesauce disliker ("hater" is too strong for how I feel about it), that apple butter might not be my favorite either.  In fruit spreads, like other things, I prefer something to chew/crunch.  But I have a houseful of family who isn't as picky, and who would enjoy a new option for toast and sandwiches.

Ch's Apple Butter

4 quarts unsweetened applesauce 

2 C sugar 

4 C brown sugar 

2 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp ground cloves 

1/2 tsp allspice 

3/4 tsp salt 

Mix it all up and bake @ 250' for 4 hours, stir periodically.  Add 4 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar (really!) and stir well.  You can process this in a water bath in pint jars or it also freezes well. In theory this makes about 7 pints.  

Good theory, I guess!

  






My friend added this note when she sent me the recipe:

"We like it on toast and pancakes.  Of course peanut butter sandwiches.  We love it on a toasted bagel, lathered with cream cheese and topped with toasted almonds.  Yum!"

Now you're talkin'... With cream cheese and almonds, I'll definitely be eating this, too. 


"There is nothing sweeter than the apple butter days of autumn." - Linda Poindexter

"Yum," for sure!

31 Days at The Nesting Place

A Confession

I don't know anyone else with this aversion, but I don't really like applesauce.  I find it a little bland and with little toothsome quality (an uppity way of saying nothing solid to sink my teeth into), I'm not a fan of the texture.  Additionally, I don't like applesauce spice cake, applesauce muffins, and I don't like using applesauce instead of fat in muffins and other baked goods.  - Blah, blah, and dry.

The baby prince will eventually enjoy some of it, I'm sure.  I look forward to that, and left it unsweetened and unspiced for that reason.  We can always add cinnamon, as we wish.  We never add sugar.

But he won't eat it all.  This means that with a LOT of applesauce on hand, I needed to search out other uses... Hopefully, savory options, since I haven't liked the applesauce desserts.  I spent a lot of time searching the internet, with limited luck.

So for a lot of the rest of my apple series, I will be sharing recipes that interested me, both from internet sources and friends.  Some unique options are out there, and I am eager to try them and share them with you.  For variety's sake, I'll mix in recipes for using fresh apples, too.

"Politics is applesauce."  -  Will Rogers

(I wonder what he'd think of it now!)

31 Days at The Nesting Place