Applesauce and a Moment of Brilliance

We take our apple-saucing very seriously around here. Yesterday, I filled my double sink up four times to wash apples, all from one very well-producing tree. We pick our apples earlier than most folks because if we leave them up on the tree too long, the bees start attacking them.

We make pies, and crisps, of course – but applesauce is a staple in our diet the rest of the year. I don’t add any sugar (they’re sweet enough) – and my children refer to it as “Mama’s Best Applesauce”. Thankfully, they have nothing to compare it to.

Next time I’ll shine the  sink up before I take a picture.

We (and when I say “we,” I mean “I”) cook the apples, put them through the Foley Food Mill, and freeze the sauce in quart size Ziploc bags.

And this is where my moment of brilliance came in.

The children take little bento boxes to school for their lunches. (Inspired years ago by Wendolonia) The ones we use most often have a top layer with a cover, usually I use that portion for peanut butter and apples, or yogurt.

I placed a layer of cling wrap  in each of the top sections, spooned some applesauce in, and stuck them in the freezer. When they were mostly frozen, I popped each of the bars of applesauce out, and started the process over.

Yes, they do look like little bars of soap.

When it comes time to pack lunches, I’ll be able to peel the plastic off, pop the frozen bar in, and send the children off to school. By the time they go to lunch, the applesauce will have thawed enough to eat, and will have kept the rest of the lunch cold as well! (School hasn’t started yet, so this is all theoretical.)

I’ll be crushed if someone else thought of this first, and I’m sure that they did – so I won’t even head over to Pinterest to check. Let me bask in my brilliance a moment longer.

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