Johnny Appleseed's mama.

The boy has been asking for "different fruit" in his lunch box for weeks. "All the other kids" get the fun little squeeze packs of applesauce in their lunchbox and he gets cutie oranges or bananas. His life is so hard and he's incredibly mistreated y'all. The bananas end up as more of a mush finger painting from him having elephants sit on his backpack or maybe using said backpack as a shield in sumo wrestling before the bell? I'm not really sure what this child does after he leaves the car in the morning and walks into that school. All I know is that the stories that play out in my head answering "What the Christmas happened here?!" simply by looking at his lunchbox are incredible. So in an attempt to say "yes" more this year, I figured I'd make fun mixtures of applesauce. Surprisingly, out of 1 bag of organic apples I got at Aldi for $5- I made a lot and it only took me about 30 minutes of time to make it! First, I peeled all the apples. There were about 15-18 in the bag and I grabbed a couple others from the week before that were starting to soften up. So maybe about 20 apples total. I quartered them and cut the core out then cut the quarters in half. I threw all the apple chunks in a crockpot with 1/2 cup of water and cooked them on high for about 4 hours. At this point it was late in the evening and I was exhausted from being up since 4 AM that morning and going non-stop so I threw them in a tupperware bowl with a lid and put them in the refrigerator overnight. This morning, I divided the apples into 3 different bowls and added the other ingredients. Bowl 1: Berry Vanilla Applesauce 1 cup of mixed berries 1/2 tsp vanilla extract Cooked apples Bowl 2: Pineapple Applesauce About 1/2 a cup of pineapple Cooked apples Bowl 3: Cinnamon Spice Applesauce Cooked apples Dash of ginger Dash of nutmeg 1 tsp of cinnamon I ran each bowl through the food processor and poured into a jar. The time you process it depends on your family's liking of texture. Mine likes it a little more processed and "not watery" per the 8 yr old's request. I made sure to rinse out my processor after each batch but otherwise, it was pretty simple and painless!

They may not get put into the fun squeeze pouches but they're still fun flavors, no added sugar, half the cost and twice the amount. I call that a win. The boy tasted them all and said the Cinnamon Spice is his favorite but he's my mini-me. We LIVE for the Fall flavors all year round. Hopefully this gives some of you lovelies a quick variation to the fruit you pack for your kids and saves you some money in the process. If you're a regular applesauce maker, what other variations have you tried? I'm always interested to try new things and hear your comments! Happy making!