Applesauce Time!

Here’s one half of the bushel of Earligold apples I bought from Reed Valley Orchard this morning, waiting in the kitchen sink to be given a pre-cooking bath.

Here are the two one-half bushel bags in the back of my little car.

Here’s the famous and irreplaceable Foley Food Mill doing its sweet messy work on the cooked apples.

And here are guidelines for making homemade applesauce from fresh apples like these Earligold. As the season goes on, Reed Valley Orchard and others will bring a succession of fantastic apples to the Lexington Farmers Market — or we can visit nearby orchards. Many kinds of apples can make applesauce, but some are particularly fine: Earligold (June, July, maybe August), McIntosh (mid-late August), and Winesap (mid-late September) are three of my favorites for sauce.

See Reed’s list of apple varieties they expect this year with ripening dates, or simply ask Dana or Trudie Reed or anyone who works at their stand in the Market. They KNOW apples, and they like sharing information. I learn something every time new and useful I talk with them.

Homemade applesauce is something of a fixation for Savoring Kentucky. It is not hard to make, though it does take a bit of time and the one essential piece of equipment (go ahead and order a 2-quart Foley Food Mill today so you can make applesauce next week!) Applesauce pleases the palate and delights others in ways hard to describe. It tastes equally good when freshly made or after having been frozen — it tastes like Kentucky’s summers, trees, and climate. To me, it tastes like home.

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The world is coming to visit central Kentucky this year for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. To help our visitors know more about Kentucky’s food and food ways, Savoring Kentucky is rolling out 116 Savory Kentucky Bites, one for each of the 100 days before WEG begins plus the 16 days of its events. Today’s Savory Bite is number 32.

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