The Rain Makes Applesauce

When my brother and sister were young, they had a book titled And the Rain Makes Applesauce. I don't remember what it was about but for some reason Mom would use the line whenever my sister uncorked a whopper. "The Bogeyman ate all the cookies!" "And the rain makes applesauce." They had another one called A Apple Pie but it wasn't nearly as memorable. Anyway, It has been an incredible year for apples and the old Gravenstein behind the mo-beel home has been producing dozens, scores, hundreds of yellow and red apples that land on the ground with a thump. The local deer can't keep up with them and the turkeys come by every morning and peck a few. I make pies out of them and gallons of applesauce which I freeze in the new freezer. The old one from the 1950s finally died. I make at least a gallon a day and sometimes two. The apples bruise where they hit the ground so I have to pare a lot of brown along with the peeling. The later in the season it gets, the riper the apples and the finer the sauce. Our tree ripens the first in the neighborhood and then there are many more later apples to steal. Should be able to have applesauce until next summer at this rate. N