Applesauce Love

For our wedding anniversary in April, I wanted to do something special but we weren't supposed to do anything expensive. My friend, Bethany, had introduced me to the idea of doing an "I love you because..." board that she found on Pinterest. The materials cost me about $10-15. It took some work, but you can make them much simpler than I did. I wanted to use complementary scrapbook paper for the background and letters, so I had to cut each letter out by hand. I also secured a matching ribbon that the frame can hang from, but we just have it standing on a small table for now.

Grant's anniversary gift from me!

Well, since he had his special board, he wanted me to have one. He found this adorable chalkboard at Target, and it became my board.

So cute!

He's been really creative with it, too! I love all of the little drawings. :)

His message was inspired by my applesauce experiment earlier this week. When he was young, his nana got him an apple tree and a peach tree for his birthday one year. The peach tree was fruitful, but is no longer at his parent's house. The apple tree was fruitful, but the birds always got to the apples first. This year, though, his mom noticed that they were ripe enough to eat, so we picked several apples and took them home.

Fresh picked apples - we had about 20 more!

Now the question was what to do with all of them. Applesauce was thrown out as a suggestion, and initially I decided I'd rather do something else that wasn't so much work. But, I had some extra time last week, and it IS one of his favorite foods, so I went for it. This is the recipe I used:

4 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped

3/4 cup water

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinammon

In a saucepan, combine apples, water, sugar, and cinnamon. Cover, and cook over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until apples are soft. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher.

It doesn't get much easier than that! It took time to peel and boil and cool, but it wasn't complicated. And...it tastes great! I'd love to try a stevia or xylitol version sometime, but I didn't want to experiment too much on Grant's apples.

These apples are smaller than store bought, so I used a lot more than four and figured it equalled about six "normal" sized apples. So, I adjusted the recipe accordingly and it seemed to work well. I think you could use less sugar than what is suggested...at least it tasted pretty sweet to me.

The finished product! He's already enjoyed quite a bit of it :)

Love, the George family