A loss on earth is a gain above....

Every time that a loved one suffers it is hard to deal with. It is even worse when the selfishness of another causes the suffering. My husband's grandmother passed away this weekend. Praise the Lord that her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were able to see her. Grandma loved her little great grand babies  it was such a blessing to see her light up when they came in the room. We know she is in a better place, and are so thankful for that. But we always wish that there was more time. 

I had said I would post the success of the applesauce, and I don't want to over shadow the seriousness of Grandma's passing. I know she would be thrilled to continue on the tradition of doing for yourself and being self sufficient. She worked hard her whole life to raise four children, married to a struggling farmer. She and her husband survived the dirty thirties, and many trials associated with farming through the years. I didn't have the pleasure of knowing Grandpa, but Grandma was a sweet, kind, loving woman and will be so missed.

The applesauce turned out wonderful!  I did a lot of research of different recipes, and took most inspiration from this recipe. 

It took me about a half hour to peel and core a 3lb bag of red delicious apples all by myself. Well not really, hubby helped by entertaining the little one!

After that I chunked the apples up and threw them in the crock pot.

And sprinkled a good amount of cinnamon on top. It took about 3 hours for the apples to get soft enough to mash. And smelled heavenly through out that time!

I mashed the apples right in the crock pot, and added sugar to suite hubby's taste buds.

After completion we ate some warm chunky applesauce over ice cream. Almost as good as warm apple crisp!! 

I stored the leftover in an empty peanut butter jar in the fridge. 

I would make only one change and decrease the amount of cinnamon, as I thought there was a little too much! 

I made this applesauce for the price of the apples: $2.38, since I already had cinnamon and sugar on hand. So that makes this applesauce 10 cents cheaper than Great Value applesauce jars and does NOT have the extra preservatives and yucky ingredients that are not needed AND tastes SOO much better!!

I don't think I will ever need to buy applesauce pre made again!!

Goulash and Applesauce

Today is the dreaded Thursday that occurs every week. Hubby only has one class on these days and it is complete torture for him to be left in the house with nothing to do. Unfortunately until he graduates in December we are stuck in the big city that is 3 hours from the farm. This is his torture, he can't go work on the tractor or build fence, drill the wheat and about a million other things. In turn my torture is the fact that he mopes about the house all day, being bored out of his mind. 

To help fill the day, I saved grocery shopping for today instead of Tuesday, that equals and hour and a half of mopey husband free time! Little one and I have shopping down to an art now, she gurgles and laughs as I recited items from the list to her in that goofy-vowed-I'd-never-use-mom-voice. Of course to a 3 month old, I'm just AWESOME, not goofy.....right?!

I am a huge fan of easy throw 'em all in the same pot types of dishes, so today we tried one of Paula Dean's recipes Bobby's Goulash. It turned out pretty good. I ended up tweaking it a little bit, for one divided everything in half since there is just the two of us. Also used crushed tomatoes vs. diced as the hubby doesn't like chunks of tomatoes in anything, and replaced Paula's seasoned salt with our favorite all purpose seasoning Misty's, which is only sold in Nebraska. Even half a recipe made more than enough for us, so I froze half for an easy pull out meal later! 

Off to tackle homemade applesauce for a tasty treat for tonight. Plan to post some pictures and recipe tomorrow if all goes well!