Crockpot Applesauce

Yum!

It's October 1st. Which means fall has officially started. I should mention that I love all things fall-related. I'm from Massachusetts originally - the home of Salem witches and some seriously awesome foliage. As any native Mass-hole will tell you, fall is the best season of the year. A time where pumpkin and apple flavors are crammed into every food-related item you can imagine. Which is why apple picking is a must on my fall to-do list. As is pumpkin picking - but we'll get to that at a later date.

A few weekends ago, my girlfriend Jessica was visiting, and we decided to head to Lohr's Orchard to do some apple picking. We picked some of the biggest apples I've ever seen. EVER. Why is it that people always pick more apples than they'll ever eat? That happened to me & Jess. After 2 weeks of eating apples, I decided it was time to do something with what I had left.

Check out the size of that apple on Jess's head!

I stumbled across a crockpot applesauce recipe that seemed very simple, and I happened to have all ingredients on hand. I figured I'd give it a shot.

The recipe I worked off of can be found here. It looks like she grabbed this recipe from Skinnytaste - one of my favorite places to find new recipes!

Ingredients:

• 7 large apples* (enough to fill a crockpot) of any variety, peeled, cored, & diced
• 1 strip of lemon peel (I used a vegetable peeler)
• 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 5 tsp light brown sugar (unpacked)

How to:

• Combine all ingredients in your crockpot
• Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Stir periodically

How easy is that?

*Keep in mind, my apples were enormous. The original recipe called for 8 medium apples, or 20 small apples. As long as you have enough to fill up your crockpot, you should be good to go!

Your apples will reduce down to a delicious blend of apples & cinnamon as they cook. I found that the consistency of the applesauce was perfect - there were small apple pieces that gave the applesauce a great texture. I used a mixture of granny smith and macintosh apples. In the future, I'd use a less tart apple than granny smith - my applesauce has a little bite to it. But overall, this recipe turned out close to perfect. And best of all - the house smelled amazing all day! 

Here's the finished product. Enjoy!

I'm new here

Hello, readers!

I thought I'd introduce myself in my first ever blog - I'm Leighanne. I recently finished my Ph.D in Biochemistry, and am living in Maryland with my amazing fiance. So what the heck is a scientist doing starting a blog, you might ask yourself? Especially a blog that's centered around everything BUT science? I'm hoping this will allow me to express my creative side. So bear with me.

I've been trying this new thing lately, where I actually leave my work at work. Oh, and I've been forcing myself to limit my work day to only 8 hours. The 6 years I spent in grad school were mentally exhausting. No matter how hard I tried, without fail, every night before bed, my research projects would creep back into my mind, keeping me awake at night. "What experiments do I need to set up tomorrow? Crap, I forgot to run that control. If I get in by 6am, I'll be able to leave by 6:30pm." I can't begin to tell you how sleep deprived I was in grad school. When you're averaging 5 hours of sleep a night, are SERIOUSLY dependent on caffeine, and you don't have an infant keeping you up all hours of the night that you can blame your tiredness on, I'd say you're working too much. I made an agreement with myself that once I graduated, I'd stop taking my work home with me and would try out the whole optimizing my work-life balance thing. Don't get me wrong, I love my new job - I work in a research lab at a prominent research University where I study Tuberculosis (awesome, right?) - and I love research. Grad school just allowed me to realize there are more important things in life than work.

So, that's what I'm doing - this blog is my way of expressing my creative side. Which I really missed these past 6 years. I love to cook (it's like setting up experiments, but way more awesome because you get to eat when it's all done), and believe it or not, I'm pretty crafty. I have recently discovered Pinterest. I'm obsessed (as most people who discover Pinterest are). This blog is my platform for demonstrating my Pinterest project wins & fails, as well as other things. My fiance, Jake, and I just bought a house, so I'm sure I'll have some tips on DIYs for the home (hopefully?). We're also planning a wedding this year, so stay tuned for all wedding related things.

Hopefully all of you will enjoy this as much as I will. So stay tuned!