Applesauce is simultaneously an ideal project for a novice canner and also a very bad idea for a novice canner. One the one hand, there's only one ingredient (that would be apples) and no tricky timing issues like with jam or jelly. On the other hand you need, in addition to a canning kettle and jars and such, a large pot for cooking the cored* apples, a large bowl into which the softened apples with be ground, a food mill with which to actually grind them**, another bowl for dumping the spent skins out of the food mill and another smaller pot for simmering the lids and rings. Then there are little enhancements like a corer, measuring cup and cutting board, although an argument can be made that the corer isn't strictly necessary. Applesauce also makes a mess - bits of apple get everywhere - much more so than crushing tomatoes, in my experience, and you can easily give yourself a terrible burn with the hot apple flying around.

It's the part about one ingredient that gets new canners, though, and frequently a newbie cannot restrain herself from the idea of heading out to the nearest u-pick orchard and loading up on a bushel or two***. After all, is there anyone who doesn't love applesauce? Moms give it by the ton to kids, very few people are allergic to apples, it can be used by the calorie-conscious as a substitute for any number of things in baking and a bowl of warm with a bit of cinnamon is the very essence of autumn. Plus, since commercial sauce now includes more often than not the much-dreaded high fructose corn syrup or some crazy coloring agent the DIY approach is totally rational.

The process (other than the mess and resulting dishes) is simple: Core* your apples and put them in a large pot (I did half a bushel at a time, each resulting in 10 pints) with about an inch of water. Cover and heat on high, watching closely for scorching. Scorched apples are nobody's friend. Once the apples begin to soften, lower the heat and allow to get pretty gosh darn mushy. When the apples are pretty uniformly soft - and some will have begun to fall apart - remove from heat. Position your food mill over a large bowl and grind away, scooping apples from the pot into the grinder CAREFULLY using a measuring cup. When each scoop is ground down to skins, dump into another bowl and repeat until all the apples are processed. Here, if you wish, you can add a bit of cinnamon or even some of those red hot candies but it's not at all necessary - fresh applesauce is yummy completely on its own. Ladle the sauce into prepared, sterilized jars leaving 3/4 inch of headspace, seal and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes (for pints) or 20 minutes (for quarts). After processing, cool on a rack or folded tea towel - any jars that didn't seal can go in the fridge for more immediate use.

That's it. It took a while and made a mess, but you've just made applesauce and are a hero in many quarters.

* I have an apple corer that removes a half-inch diameter chunk from the apple center. Some people use a fancy contraption that cores and slices the apples all at once. A colleague explained to me that she doesn't bother coring, she just slices the apples in half and cooks them, relying on the food mill to take care of seeds and such. I asked if she's ever had a problem with seeds in the apple sauce and she doesn't. As I really don't enjoy coring apples at all I may consider this approach next year.

** You don't need a food mill if you just want to make the occasional batch of sauce to, say, go with dinner or as a treat for the kids. To make a single-batch, core and peel an apple per person and slice it into a saucepan with just a bit of water. Cook them down in the same fashion as the larger batch and when uniformly soft, pour them into a bowl and smash with a fork. Add cinnamon if you like and there you have a very respectable and easy side dish to go along with pork (traditionally) or just about anything else you can imagine.

*** I use "seconds" - apples that are perfectly good but not quite as ready for their close-up - at half the price of "firsts". A bushel of seconds cost me $22.00 and resulted in 20 pints of applesauce and 6 half-pints of spiced apples, not a huge savings off of retail but a very large savings on what economists call "the intangibles". Your friendly orchardist will have signs letting you know what varieties are good for which uses. For saucing I use a combination that gives me lots of different flavors blended together. My mom likes jonamacs (I think this is what they're called) for the pinky hue they lend to the resulting product. My sauce is the more standard beige but tasty nonetheless.

"Uh, Hon," began Brainiac as I peeled veggies for last night's dinner, "There will be a frost tonight. Would you like me to pick the remaining peppers? T'would be a shame to lose them."

I mumbled a distracted sure and expressed my belief that I didn't really think that there were all that many peppers left in the garden, that certainly somewhere in the haze of applesauce and pumpkins and whatever else it is that I've been doing I managed to get them all. Whatever, I thought as I poured milk over a casserole of flour and sliced potatoes, if there's a few more we can dry them for pepper flakes for pizzas and pastas. Or maybe I can cover them in chocolate like I saw in that commercial for...what is that commercial for, anyway? No matter. Peppers, fine, whatever.

I was wrong.


This is what Brainiac brought into me. I guess you could say that that it was a pretty good year for just about every kind of pepper that we ever thought of growing. Can we agree to describe this as an embarrassment of peppers? We will dry some, I think - a few the old-fashioned way of stringing them through their stems and hanging in a window and more in the dehydrator OUTSIDE in the mudroom (you know that oft-repeated warning about not wiping one's eyes or lips or nose just after handling hot peppers? Well, drying something in a machine means quickly removing the water and transferring that moisture into the air. YOU DO NOT WANT SPICY WATER RELEASED INTO YOUR HOUSEHOLD AIR for breathing and walking around in. Seriously. Ouch.)

I may also make a bit of hot pepper jam. As a rule, I don't care for spicy-sweet combinations but pepper jam has a nostalgic hook for me in that my paternal grandmother used to make a batch here and there and always remembered to send a jar "back east" in her Christmas box. With a bit of cream cheese on a cracker and a sprig of cilantro, pepper jam makes a nice canape and can serve as a bit of a pick-me-up for an otherwise plain grilled steak. Although it's not something I'd want in the same quantities as, say, strawberry jam, a couple of jars would be nice to keep around. Especially since, clearly, I've got the peppers to spare.

Regretably, Outlander was checked out (all six copies) when Brainiac went to the library for me. In its stead he brought me something called Blackthorne Cottage wherein the heroine inherits from a kindly employer a tumbledown cottage in a small (quaint, natch) English village where she sets about to correct some sort of problem vexing the Vicar's property committee while (whilst?) also falling in love with the estate agent who wishes to purchases the house from her for less than its value and whose motives, alas, may not be entirely pure. Or something like that.

Luckily, the cool grey rainy-ness we're expecting over the next several days makes for the perfect environment in which to settle in with exactly this sort of book. With it, Shirley Valentine in from Netflix, and the task of producing a large number of Halloween-themed cupcakes for various kid events set before me I figure I'm in for a very cozy, restorative weekend. My original plan for tomorrow included running around to various purveyors of I don't remember what and a schlep up to Ikea, but no. Plan B, now in effect, dictates going nowhere, buying nothing, resting lots. Better, I think.

Mad props go out today to Jenn who suggested the best use yet for the embarassing excess of green tomatoes hanging out on my kitchen table: chopping and freezing them for use in curries. Ding Ding Ding - I think we have a winner. I've been putting off making the mincemeat because I couldn't really see anyone enjoying it outside of my own satisfaction in making something different (to us) and conquering a new recipe and it seemed like such a waste of food, energy and time to create what might well have been successful only in the abstract. So I am taking Jenn's suggestion and chopping/freezing is exactly what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it tonight - to most of the tomatoes, anyway. Coincidentally, I planned on a curry for tonight's dinner but it never once occured to me to include the tomatoes but you can bet at least a couple will make it into the pot. Fab. Thanks, Jenn.

Well, I think you can put my accomplishments down as "incremental". I did manage to make the pickled green tomatoes and even took a picture to prove it to you. Do you know, though, that pickled green tomatoes don't really look all that nice? I used a cold pack (raw food put into sterilized jars) and at the start they were a brilliant emerald green. After processing they're more a greenish whitish tone and...not lovely. I'm sure I'll appreciate them in winter's martinis where I don't really have to look at their rather ickish color.

With the rest of the green tomatoes, the non-cherry sized ones, I don't know. I had tossed around that tomato mincemeat idea but...I really don't want to end up with a bunch of jars of something that no one's going to eat. I only know one person (my dad) who enjoys mincemeat and he probably means the real thing when he says that. Does anyone actually make mincemeat anymore, or is it all this veggie and fruit business? The recipe is nothing more than a chutney, although a non-spicy one, and it just might be nice in little button-sized tarts at the gingerbread house party. See? I talk myself out of something and then talk myself right back into it again. No wonder I don't get much done. Too busy prevaricating.

And worrying. I haven't yet finished the gift for my oldest sister because I've been so totally exhausted from a few nights in a row of worried awakeness. I come from a long line of overnight worriers. My people, they could have been clog dancers or ice wine makers or a political dynasty but no, their contribution to the world is worry. All night long for nights and months at a time. It is, literally and figuratively, tiresome.

I won't tell you what I worry about - some of it totally legit scary stuff, some most of it ridiculous - as I don't want to set you worrying and don't wish to further imprint the list on myself, but here are some things I thought about in between bouts of breathless panic:

1) Where I might have laid the lavender thread I bought to finish a pillow case for the Girl. The poor girl gets the most incredible knots in her hair from sleeping on cotton. Mom to the rescue (maybe) with lavender satin pillowcases with a bit of Daisy Kingdom fabric peeking out from inside. I could use white thread, sure, but where is the lavender?

2) Would everyone like a bit of chocolate bread pudding this weekend? I haven't made any in a while and it's supposed to be kind of rainy and yucky, if unseasonably warm. Maybe I'd be better off waiting for a colder day.

3) Whether or not I should start reading the Outlander series. I've been very keen lately to find books that won't feed this cycle of worry - I want nothing that Julia so aptly described as "depressing, depressing-but-redemptive, intensely thoughtful, or nonfiction unless it is funny". Where Outlander falls in these requirements I don't know, but people keep telling me I need to read it.

4) Whether Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity is going to be made available here in the States.

5) Why is it, do you think, that last year we had few apples on the apple trees but rather too an abundant a showing from the gingko but this year the reverse was true with lots of apples and mercifully few gingko berries. Those of you know understand what a highly fruiting gingko tree is all about also understand why we're so happy about the switcheroo and probably also get why we're trying to figure out what happened so we can encourage it to happen again next year and the year after and so on.
6) Reading older books and memoirs of days gone by can be very helpful with the worrying stuff. It's very nice to know that despite a drought in France in '49 that convinced the country that the end times where near, coupled with crushing shortages and rationing of just about everything, did not stop Julia Child or anyone else there at the time from enjoying what there was to enjoy, no guilt involved. I also appreciated reading of Delia Lutes' belief that the Christmas celebrations she knew as a child in the 1880s were nothing at all like the "soul killing" consumption-oriented orgies of the "children of today" (Lutes wrote in the 1930s). And in The American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Marie Child bemoans the focus that mothers place on their children's clothing and activities - to the detriment of their useful educations, and that so many of her fellow citizens spend more than they earn trying to match the lifestyle of the wealthy and famous.

In short, it is nice to know that the more things change...and with that in mind, perhaps tonight I will finish my sister's gift.

I started to put a little list of ongoing and outstanding projects on the sidebar. Perhaps it'll motivate me, I thought, to have a bit of public accountability for my window treatment making, cross stitching, chocolate saucing, candle pouring, wizard cape making self. As the list became longer and longer and longer (this is for projects for which I already have the materials, not the "stuff I wish I could learn to do" list) I didn't feel motivated or accountable so much as depressed. Even so, I don't feel like I have too much to do, just that I haven't organized things (by this I mean "my life") properly (I have to get things out and then put them away and then get them out and...resulting in a whole bunch of stuff that's partially completed. It occured to me last night that I can avoid the problem of having to clean up and then reaccess unfinished projects by actually finishing them. Stress will be further avoided by finishing things in the order in which they need to be delivered - things sent to Buffalo need to be done and wrapped by Thanksgiving, items for local recipients can be worked on through December, food processing trumps all of this. (You are probably as shocked as I that, for these brainstorms if nothing else, the Nobel Committe didn't award me a little something. Where are the awards for achievement in domestic arts and organization?)

Tonight's goal is to complete the gift I'm planning on sending my oldest sister for Christmas. Given its current state, I shouldn't need more than an hour. After that...pickling the last of the green cherry tomatoes. That, too, will be quick, maybe 45 minutes total and not all of that hands-on. If I can stay awake long enough tonight, both of these projects should be well within hand.

Here are some other brainstorms I've recently enjoyed:

1) No matter how beautiful, sweet and delicious, homemade raspberry-infused vodka is, it is still vodka and should be treated as such.

2) I am no longer young and fit enough to ignore #1, above, at anything other than extreme bodily peril.

3) Numbers 1 and 2, above, very likely also apply to the ginger, pepper and mint infusions still bubbling away in the kitchen.

4) If one doesn't, at the close of Christmas celebrations, pack the advent wreath candle holder in the box marked "Advent Wreath" one will not be able to find it for a preschool fundraising committee meeting the following October just by opening said box. Instead, profanity-filled excursions into the third floor storage area will be required and the candle holder will remain unlocated.

5) When a colleague remarks that one lives one's life as if in "an English village in the '50s" it is probably not meant as a compliment. However, it may be the less career-limiting move to treat it as such.

So ends the collected wisdom of Hot Water Bath for today.

The advent of fall weather found me matching capless acorns with acornless caps and hot gluing the pairs together. What nature won't provide, I am happy to create in a way that seems to me to be closely related to what my decision sciences professor explained as the brute force method.

These are meant, along with the intended purchase of a couple dozen Jack B Little pumpkins, will comprise some sort of activity for the scout meeting we're hosting next week. It'll be too dark for a nature walk so I had the idea to bring a bit of nature inside and let the boys create little autumn dioramas. Really, what could be more natural than hot-glued acorns? With the nuts and pumpkins and perhaps some leaves, grasses and seed pods from elsewhere around the yard I think we'll be in good shape for a perfectly respectable scout activity.

The entire family spent a good amount of time cleaning out the garden today, too. The kids were delighted to pick the remaining green cherry tomatoes and dried bean pods and take down the bamboo poles while their father mulched the plants with the mower and I did my best impression of a porcupine after falling butt-first into a totally new (to me) kind of burr-plant thing. Fun for all.

The bean pods held more than enough seed for next year (to the Girl's amusement, "Mommy! It's food in here!") and there are enough green tomatoes (cherry and otherwise) that I am looking about for canning recipes to use them and which don't involve anything that could conceivably be though of as sweet-n-sour. Maybe a nice mincemeat? Not a clue what I'd do with it after making it, but it sure does sound intriguing, eh

We've been Netflix customers for some time now, having joined in the first place because we aren't exactly at what you'd call an optimum level of returning rented movies on time. Since we never actually go to the cinema (I haven't been since the first Harry Potter and Brainiac probably since the second-to-last Star Trek) and our public library charges for movies (and is a trigger for the aforementioned not-returning problem), the comparatively nominal Netflix fees are a downright steal and, with nearly 200 items in my queue (the result of years of non-movie goingness) I have settled in for a nice, long relationship with the company.

My feelings on the subject became even more rosy with the discovery that Netflix carries a whole genre that I hadn't even noticed before - something called "Special Interest" - which carries a whole series of Martha Stewart holiday- and entertaining-related DVDs, as well as gardening and spoken word and theater arts and....well, as someone who prefers reading non-fiction, it's like finding a whole new arm of the Dewey Decimal System.

Last night I watched Martha's Halloween DVD, which I found charming (especially the bit about using a keyhole saw to carve pumpkins - doh! never thought of it). I don't generally "do" Halloween, but I like thinking about what I might try if I did. Next up (after we return the Girl's choice of Mary Poppins) is Martha's Thanksgiving disk. And then there's Alton Brown's first Feasting on Asphalt and Julia Child's original French Chef series and Flower Power and...it's just all so great. If possible, I am now even more in love with Netflix.

As a DIY junkie, I might just have found the perfect enabler.

The recent recall of green beans and other commercially-produced canned goods got me to thinking about the upcoming winter gift-giving holidays and the toy-related recalls. With regards to the parental side of my identity, these recalls hitting me where I 1) feed and 2) delight my kids is really getting just a bit too close to my inner Mama Bear and are hits I don't take blithely. Growing and processing at least some of my family's food and procuring what I can from people whom I recognize and can call by name gives me a feeling - however much of an illusion - of control. Likewise does an alternative approach to gift giving. I may pay a bit more for gifts than I would if I shopped at Stuff*Mart (with thanks and apologies to Madame Blueberry and the rest of the Veggie Tales crew), but what are mere pennies when stretched over the life of a gift that will last for years, possibly becoming an heirloom, or - let's be frank - meets my rather minimum standard of flat-out NOT poisoning the recipient?

So what's a girl who loves giving gifts, who loves determining just the right gift, to do? Here are my Official 2007 Hot Water Bath gift-giving strategies:

1) Thinking about giving less. Not less in terms of thought or even in terms of the number of recipients (I am the daughter of a woman who gave gifts to her favorite restaurant servers and as such I am incapable of not giving presents) but rather in terms of the actual tangible items. The families on your list might enjoy a museum or zoo membership or a cool picnic basket of the kind that can actually be used (with a promise to fill it with a great picnic once spring comes anew). For years when I couldn't purchase gifts for all my girlfriends I instead had a holiday brunch at my apartment. Champagne and smoked salmon at a restaurant is expensive and kind of a hassle. At home they're indulgent and nurturing. If my nieces lived closer, I think I'd give them a tea party. Alas, they're at a distance but I can still give them tea...and special tea cups just for them. Not elaborate, not cluttering, not too much, just special and just right. My father let it be known some time ago that he does not need anything that he has to dust and/or in some other way care for so he usually receives consumables like steaks or wine, or a book (he's a voracious reader) or greens fees. Note to self: talk to Dad about putting together a wish list on Amazon.

2) DIYing wherever possible. This year's homemade gifts on my project list include home canned items (pickled hot peppers, chocolate sauce, jerk sauce) gifted in embellished jars and including recipes and serving ideas, aprons, a wizard cape for my Harry Potter-mad nephew, wreaths, a puppet theater and more. Those who would laugh at or sneer at a made-with-love present do not deserve a place on the gift-list, I think. Even homemade items that miss the mark ought to be received with love and gratitude - effort and love always trump cash. If you fear that a child (or, sadly, an adult) on your list may not be charmed by a homemade whatever in the face of plastic battery-operated madness, persist. As the saying goes, we must be the change we want in the world and even if you're not a knitter (I'm not) or a quilter (I'm not) or a...I don't know...candle-dipper, you surely must have some kind of talent that can be put to good use. I cannot be the only 38-year old in the world who still loves mix tapes CDs, right? And I especially love them with collaged covers.

3) Avoiding mass-market retailers in favor of local shops, artisan-focused web clearinghouses like Etsy and your neighbors who exhibit at the school winter fair. My sisters and I have been known to pick up the occasional thrifted or yard sale item for each other with great success - both are excellent for pretty retro tableware (wine glasses to go with a bottle of local wine, say), jewelry (a nifty broach), books (great frameables can be found in old art books) or even toys (I've bought hundreds of legos at my local cancer-center thrift). The proprietress of my local toy store - they still exist! - knows what is made where and what companies really feel their products and resist such rapid growth as to require lowering quality and sourcing standards. She's the one who turned me onto Maine-made Taurus Toys and their marble run components that work with Duplo.

4) Not gifting for the sake of obligation. We've all been on the receiving end of gifts that were given for no other reason than the giver felt obliged - and it showed. Someday I'll tell you about the present I received that was accompanied by the statement, "I don't know what this is. Some kind of weird jam maybe. Whatever, Merry Christmas." Gifts given begrudgingly are not gifts at all and I'd rather receive heartfelt good wishes over a "here's the present I must give you" any day. A handwritten note of appreciation is yards better than the pre-wrapped random whatsits poorly made goodness knows where, for sale by the scores, not intended to last (or at least not last the year and you can buy another one) and only intended to put a thing in an emotional space that advertisers would have you believe to be empty but really isn't. Buy some substantial writing paper - Crane is nice, but there are lots of others - something heavy that says read this, it's important, get a pen that works (not always a simple proposition, I know) and dust off your best pre-email handwriting. You do to have time. It only takes two or three minutes to write down how much you value someone and the relationship you share. Put on the address and stamp before you stand up from your desk or dining table or wherever and put the finished card with your keys so you will remember it when you next go out.

5) Being practical where called for. Sometimes, delight and whimsy aren't on the menu. That should be o.k. and not something from which to shy. My newly-engaged grandmother and her fiancé have between them decades of acquisitions that they are about to combine into a single household and, while they are quite independent and mobile, getting out and about isn't always the easiest thing. Stamps, a selection of greeting cards, pre-paid phone cards and the like are the things I'm thinking of for them.

There you have it. Reading this, I think that my sister thinks she knows what I'm sending to her house for Christmas and she so totally does not.

I finished a project last night.

Wait. I like the sound of that. Let me repeat myself: I finished a project last night.

That reads beautifully, doesn't it? The project I finished is a tutu long promised to the Girl and worked on only in fits and starts. Yesterday after her grandparents left from a weekend visit and her brother was whisked off to (another) birthday party she asked with such sweetness if I thought perhaps, maybe, just possibly we could work on it, the tutu which had been pinned months ago and languishing in a sideboard cupboard ever since.

In the end, the finishing wasn't that difficult. Produced only of three layers of white tulle covered in two layers of a silky pinky something (bought unmarked from a remnants bin for twenty-five cents), stitched together at the waist and run through with a bit of elastic, I'd say that the total effort - stretched over months, granted - was probably no more than 45 minutes with five minutes of that needed to secure a butterfly to the waist.

The final product could be a bit fluffier and I may well cut the underlying tulle to graduate it into greater overall volume. It's not a professional job, to be sure, but not at all bad for no pattern, I think. The Girl is happy and for that I am even happier.

The next project to complete - grabbing the low-hanging fruit, the things almost done - is an apron intended for my sis-in-law and which has been in its current not-quite-finished state for at least three months. (Aside: Why on earth I get things so close to done and then don't finish them is beyond me. Especially when completion is so satisfying.) And then, I think, a few of some teeny tiny counted cross-stitch Christmas things from Mary Engelbreit. Mary can sometimes a bit too much for my tastes but when it comes to Christmas all bets are off and the more too much I can get, the better.

Susie J will say I need to post pictures. She's right. Forthcoming, tonight, maybe, perhaps, just possibly.