Apples for Days.

I admit it. I’ve been completely sucked into frickin’ Pumpkin Spice Season this year. And I don’t even drink Pumpkin Spice Latte’s.

We don’t even bother calling it fall anymore. Around here we tend to keep the seasons according to Trader Joe’s. Summer starts when they bring out the pickle flavored everything, fall begins with pumpkin spice and winter commences when everything is tastes like candy canes (including my favorite tea).

Fall isn’t really a thing where we live though, or rather, because the weather is so mild it’s kind of like fall and spring all year long. A big change, that I love, from the desert that I used to live in where our two seasons were abso-fucking-lutely freezing winter and hot-as-balls summer.

There have been a lot of pretty wretched up and downs around here over the last few weeks and I think that perhaps I’m just ready for a change, so I’ve jumped into Pumpkin Spice Season with both feet.

My kiddo has been eating Trader Joe’s GF pumpkin spice bagels (they wait all year for these) with breakfast every morning and I’m quite fond of the scent that fills our tiny apartment while its toasting.

I’m really looking forward to the slightly cooler weather (that I hope is coming soon) so I can make pumpkin pie oatmeal and start using the oven again to make the GF version of my grandmothers’ pumpkin cookies, roast vegetables and of course make soup. I adore soup.

Over the last few days though, I’ve really been reminiscing about one of my favorite fall activities and the yum that came to fruition from it. Apple picking.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the wonders of fresh fruits and veggies and waxed nostalgic about the time that I first picked apples when I was a Girl Scout and how apple picking became an annual tradition that I carried on with my own family.

From the time my kiddos were too little to carry the buckets, we would drive to the Tehachapi mountains at the height of apple season and pick pounds and pounds of Golden Delicious. We always picked way too many apples, but they never went to waste.

The kids ate apples constantly for the next few weeks, for snacks, in lunches. They had Apple Pie oatmeal for breakfast. I often sautéed some sliced apples in butter with a little coconut sugar and pumpkin pie spice and topped it with a smidge of whipped cream for dessert. And I even made a caramel cheesecake dip that we ate with apples on Thanksgiving (again I find myself longing for the days of dairy past). Super yum.

The overall family favorite though was what my kids dubbed Mama’s Special Applesauce. It really wasn’t anything that special, but they loved it and they loved that I canned so much of it that we had it all year long and they had free reign to eat it whenever they wanted because I didn’t add any sugar to it.

We haven’t gone apple picking for 5 or 6 years now and I miss it. A lot. It was one of those sublimely wholesome family traditions that I (and my kiddos) looked forward to every year. We picked apples, ate some right off the tree, sometimes had a picnic at a local park and even found a nearby pumpkin farm where we were able to pick pumpkins at the same time.

This post unintentionally turned into one of those long-winded recipe blog type posts that I so despise, I hope that you find the included recipe worth the read though. It’s incredibly easy, assuming you have a handy dandy Pampered Chef Apple Peeler Corer Slicer. I know I sound like an infomercial (and I was a Pampered Chef consultant in another life) but seriously, that thing was a fucking god-send on applesauce making day. If you happen to possess an unholy amount of apples and need to prep them for this or something else, I highly recommend it.

While I won’t be picking apples myself this year (I will however be cleaning out the farmers market), I would be remiss not to mention where my Southern California friends can go to pick apples. In my 30ish years of apple picking (holy shit that makes me sound old), I’ve been to each of these and then some.

But without further ado, the moment you’ve surely all been waiting for, the recipe for:

Mama's Special Applesauce

1 full 8 qt. pot peeled, sliced and cored apples

4 c apple cider (Trader Joe’s Spiced Cider is my favorite)

Pumpkin pie spice to taste

Stir, then bring to a boil. Simmer on low until apples are completely cooked down. Mash or puree for a smoother texture if preferred.

Delectable on its own, with latkes or pork chops, in oatmeal, served warm over vanilla ice cream and makes a quick and scrumptious apple pie filling.