Allergies and Dessert

My son is getting tested for food allergies. While I don't like the idea of him having allergies, I am thrilled with the thought that we might finally find the reason for all his itching and rashiness. Until we get the test results back, I've had to take him off all the most popular allergens: wheat, dairy, egg, nuts, and fish. It wouldn't be that difficult since he's currently only eating baby food and cereal but I'm still a nursing momma so I have to adjust my diet as well. Uh oh. Let's just say I don't diet well. If I'm trying to lose weight I have to add exercise because I stink at cutting back or taking things out of my diet. Just can't do it. Maybe I'm a bit of an emotional eater or maybe I just like my cereal and desserts too much but it's a characteristic I've come to terms with in myself.

In adjusting to this temporary character-building experience, I went in search of a dessert I could eat. They proved difficult since almost all desserts involve flour, butter or cream. Luckily about that time, Hannah from honey & jam posted just the thing: homemade apple sauce. Simple and yummy and delightfully free of wheat, dairy, nuts, and egg (and of course fish). Hooray!!

Spiced Slow Cooker Applesauce
by honey & jam
8 apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg

Combine apples and water in crockpot and cook on Low setting for 4 to 6 hours. Stir in sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; continue cooking for another 30 minutes.

The ingredients.

Peeled apples.

Crockpot full of wonderfully sweet apples.

Just to prove you don't need any special tools to peel and slice apples, I did it all with only these tools. Not really. I just don't have any of those super fun gadgets. If I was really cool like my mom, all I would have needed was one little knife. She's got all sorts of crazy awesome farm girl skills like that. Kudos to you, Mommy-O.

After about 5 hours, I added the sweet and spicy magic to the crockpot. I had a couple of other pictures of this step but they all included my husband's nose. This pot smelled awesome so it was hard to keep our noses away.

Spiced apples.

Seeing that it was still pretty chunky, I tried to mash the cooked apples up with a potato masher. While it was fun, it wasn't really all that effective. I didn't mind the bigger chunks of apple; if you fancy a finer fare (that's for you Tyler) you would probably want to cut your apples thinner than I did so they mash better.

The final product: awesome!! This was absolutely delicious and I'm not just saying that because it's the only really sweet thing I've eaten in a while. It's a big, warm bowl of comfort but I'm sure it would be just as good cold. I even took Hannah's suggestion and mixed it in with my oatmeal the next morning. Incredible. This is already on my list of favorite recipes and I know I'll be making this for years.