Food Friday: Two-Step Chunky Microwave Applesauce

We had a fair number of apples left over from Zone Conference last month.  I wondered if we could make baked apples in the microwave.  Mind you, I am not that much a fan of baked apples but I thought that might use up a good few of the apples.

The first step was to get a nice glass bowl for the microwave at Goodwill.  The bowl is a fabulous bowl.  Nice and heavy and the perfect size.

Next I cut four apples in half and scooped out the core, placed them in the bowl (overlapping a little bit) then sprinkled on a little brown sugar, then dotted with butter.  Finally I put them in the microwave at the office and cooked them for 5 minutes on high.

After five minutes the apples were mostly softened but not mush.  I was only able to talk one person in the office to try one.  Since that did not go as I had hoped, I put the bowl in the refrigerator overnight.

Today I brought my little Ninja Food Chopper Express to the office and chopped up those cold apples.  It made wonderful chunky applesauce!  In no time flat!

By the way, this is NOT the nice heavy glass bowl from Goodwill...!

Vacation Applesauce

Another thing you can make on vacation in a well-appointed kitchen:  applesauce.

This is what I did:

Washed and cored the apples we had brought from Vermont to Virginia to eat up before they softened.  Well, some of them HAD softened so to save their lives I made them into applesauce.

Put the cored and quartered apples into a saucepan with a little water...maybe a cup of water, just enough to cover the bottom and get steam going.  Put the cover on and started heating the pan.  In about 10 minutes I looked at the apples and stirred them around.  They had started cooking.  After another 5-6 minutes I checked again, and stirred them thoroughly again.  They were mostly cooked, so I put the cover back on and turned off the heat.  Since this was an electric cook top they could continue to enjoy heat for a little longer.

We left the hot applesauce to cool.  When we returned the apples were cool enough to blend up in the blender.  (Always check to see if you have a blender before starting a project like this...)  All the cooked apples in their skins fit into the blender. I added one-quarter cup sugar and blended these guys to pieces.  This turned out to be baby food applesauce, but it did taste good.  And the apples did not rot.  Well, one got away from us in the car and turned out to be what we were smelling when we got into the car the next day...

Applesauce made while on vacation away from home

Side story:
We went out for a couple of hours to look for a flash drive that the family history conference director told us we needed to have to download our presentations to so we could use them with the projectors.  We found a thumb drive at Best Buy in Mays Landing, New Jersey.  They did not have lanyards but said Staples did so we walked over to Staples.  They DID have lanyards but they were 1.  not attractive, and 2.  the same cost as the thumb drive!  Did not want to do that.  I had already gotten the more expensive thumb drive:  $11.99.

There was a Michael's store in the same plaza so we went over there (driving this time since my legs had had it with the cement underfoot...)  There we found a whole raft of lanyards for $3.99.  Most of them were gaudy horrible things that I would not wear.  There was one with fat fake pearls which was barely acceptable but the price was right and I needed something to keep the tiny electronic device from getting lost.

In the end it turned out to be unnecessary to have a flash drive, but now I have a nice thumb drive.  And on a lanyard!