When Annie Gets Anxious

...in July she makes applesauce. Lots and lots of applesauce.

That's when Beverly Hills apples ripen in Sherman Oaks, California where she lives. Annie picks them all from a single tree in the backyard or from where they've fallen and rolled in the garden. Some are large streaked in red, others quite small like pale green rocks. Most of them, at least in part, make it into the pot. 

Annie soaks the apples in a sink full of sudsy cool water, then runs her fingers around each one feeling for bruises or holes. Ones with stems still attached get rinsed separately. If the stems made it this far, then they deserve gentle removal.  A good rinse and the apples are ready to go.

She slices them open with a paring knife in one swoop. Then cuts, slowly and methodically, on each side of the core until only the seeds are left. With one swoop the seeds are offed. This precision wastes none of the solid white flesh and often exposes worms rather than chopping them up.

 

Annie leaves a small bit of apple around the worms and sets them aside on a small clear glass plate. The squiggling worms used to give her the creeps, but since she doesn't peel the apples, Annie perfected cutting around them. That way the worms ended up in the composter and could eat something else rather than dying such a harsh sharp death.

Of course, Annie has a big old dutch oven. It's ordinary enough and special enough to have hosted fish and potato chowders, chicken soup (every time somebody gets sick), boiling potatoes that get mashed right there in the pot every Thanksgiving, and even bouillabaisse. No lobsters.  

Annie thinks about all those delicious, delectable meals as she drops the first few quartered apples, bing bong, onto the bottom of the pot. Her fingers work steadfastly, quickly, paring away like a corpsman on kitchen duty with a sack full of potatoes.

She pops a piece in her mouth periodically. The fresh juicy tartness brings a slow smile that spreads, by the time the pot is full, from ear to ear. This is her secret, and greatest delight. 

Annie's never measured how much water she pours over the apple slices. Enough, is what she'll tell you if you ask.  A heap of cinnamon and dusting of nutmeg contrast so distinctly with the apple green she wishes it didn't have to be stirred into the vortex that ultimately leaves an appearance of green speckled skin, then dissolves into a neutral multidimensional background. 

"I imagine a very early Andy Warhol might have looked like this, before he added the vivid gold leaf and pale singular figures. Back when he was just figuring out how to juggle the images and colors, "she said once.

As in every cooking experience, time lapses while the pot simmers, and the mind can rest as it watches the natural events take place as the mixture shifts, mushes, mulls and dissolves into an aromatic new form. There have been times when Annie put in too much water, so she had to cook it off, which gave her a little more time to consider the process. She thinks about how if her hand didn't stir the pot, the apples would stick to the bottom of the pan and burn and be ruined. She realizes with joy that she has a "hand" in the outcome of this endeavor which is inevitably successful in about an hour or so.

So simple and so beautiful.

Annie would never presume to tell others how to make applesauce, or even that they should make applesauce, but she does love to share a bowl full with everyone she knows. 

And that's the truth. To some extent.