By The peaches are back at the farm stand, and I bought a bushel, which is more peaches than two people and a dog can reasonably consume but I've never let reason interfere with my relationship with stone fruit. Helen looked at the bushel on the kitchen counter and said, "We're going to be making peach things all week." I said, "Yes." She said, "Fine." And we did.
Monday: peach cobbler. Tuesday: peach jam — six jars, sealed and shelved. Wednesday: peach ice cream, made in the hand-crank machine Helen's mother gave us in 1983 that still works because things built before 1990 were built to last and things built after 1990 were built to be replaced. The ice cream required forty minutes of cranking, which I did on the porch while Frost watched with the patient expectation of a dog who knows that someone always drops the spoon.
Thursday: peach pie. Helen's crust, my filling. Sliced peaches with sugar, a little flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, a pat of butter on top before the crust goes on. Bake until the crust is golden and the kitchen smells like something that should be bottled and sold to people who are having a bad day. Peach pie fixes bad days. This is not a medical claim. This is a fact.
By Friday we'd used half the bushel and given the other half to Jerry and Marie and the woman down the road whose name I keep forgetting and who Helen knows because Helen knows everyone. The peaches are gone. The house still smells like them. August in Vermont: the season of too much, which is always better than the season of not enough.
Sarah called to say Lucy is sleeping through the night, which Sarah described as "a miracle of modern parenting" and which I remember as "something all babies eventually do when you stop worrying about it." I didn't say that. I've learned, at sixty-four, that the wisdom a grandfather offers is best offered silently, through maple candy and oatmeal cookies, not through advice that sounds like criticism. The baby sleeps. Everyone's happy. The peach pie was good.
August is winding down. The peaches know. The garden knows. I know. September is coming. Frost can feel it in the mornings — he lies closer to the woodstove at night, testing the autumn air. The wheel turns. We turn with it.
The peaches taught us the rhythm again this year — buy too many, make too much, give the rest away, and feel good about all of it. Now that September is knocking and the farm stand is pivoting from stone fruit to apples, we’re setting up the slow cooker and doing it all over again. This applesauce is the natural next chapter: same unhurried spirit as the jam, same warm spices as Thursday’s pie, and just enough patience required that Frost has time to assume his position of hopeful observation on the kitchen floor.
Slow Cooker Applesauce
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 4 hrs | Total Time: 4 hrs 15 min | Servings: 10 (about 5 cups)
Ingredients
- 4 lbs apples, mixed varieties (such as Cortland, McIntosh, or Honeycrisp), peeled, cored, and roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup water
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 pinch kosher salt
Instructions
- Load the slow cooker. Add the chopped apples, water, and lemon juice to a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker. Stir to combine.
- Add spices. Sprinkle the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt over the apples. Give everything a gentle stir so the spices are distributed throughout.
- Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 hours, or on HIGH for 2 hours, until the apples are completely tender and beginning to fall apart on their own.
- Mash or blend. For a chunky applesauce, mash the apples directly in the slow cooker with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon. For a smoother texture, use an immersion blender or carefully transfer batches to a standard blender.
- Taste and adjust. Sample the applesauce and add more sugar or cinnamon if needed. Remember the flavor will deepen slightly as it cools.
- Cool and store. Let the applesauce cool to room temperature, then transfer to clean jars or airtight containers. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks, or process in a water-bath canner for shelf-stable jars.
Nutrition (per serving, approx. 1/2 cup)
Calories: 95 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 25g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 15mg