Feisty Fox Ancestral Applesauce

A few weekends ago, we decided to go apple picking. It was one of those things that we have always said we want to do (every Fall) but never seem to actually execute. There is something quintessentially Fall in the Northeast about the idea of doing it! 

But as we drove out of the orchard upstate, passing what felt like border control, we looked at each other and suddenly asked, “How are we going to eat over 12 pounds of apples before they go bad?!” 

We spent the entire car ride back to the city relating stories to each other of apple dishes we had growing up that we wanted to recreate. The very first thing I thought of was the applesauce my grandma and grandpa used to make and serve over pork chops. Now THAT is Fall. And all I could remember was how good that applesauce was. 

I emailed grandma and scrounged up her recipe. I’m happy to report if you have a few hours to let this sit on the stove and cook, it’s as easy as pie (and much tastier!). As the other half said when we sat down to eat, “This is everything applesauce is meant to be…” 

“Savor Summer Sometime Soon” Tomato Sauce

There is nothing better than a ripe tomato in August. You don’t have to do anything to them. There’s almost too much flavor! And when they are in season, they can be so cheap! Buying pounds and pounds of tomatoes at the farmer’s market is completely feasible! So I obviously bought up all the tomatoes I could carry home.

Desperate to cling on to summer past Labor Day, I decided to use my haul to make my own tomato sauce and freeze it this year. It’s a great way to hack recipes with vibrant summer flavors months from now. I used a great simple recipe from David Tanis' City Kitchen in the New York Times as my starting point to play around with below.

And it’s really simple to make because you really don’t add much more than tomatoes! This week, I’ll walk through how to make the sauce and the couple of recipes I made with it before I froze it. I’ve got a bunch of sauce in the freezer now, so you can expect this to make reappearance once the ground has frosted over.