I stumbled across the Six Word Saturday challenge this morning and decided to have a go. Combining this effort with a project I had planned for the morning, I came up with:
“Martha Stewart I Certainly Am Not”
I decided to make applesauce today. Not to prove anything to anyone, or even to suggest that I might have made a competent pioneer in days of yore. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’d have made a rather crappy pioneer; while I might have managed to eke out a few beeswax candles when needed, and even the odd bar of soap maybe, the intricacies of broom-making and sock-darning, and the spectre of having to kill my own chickens would have been my undoing. (You may note that sadly, my very shaky concept of pioneer life is based almost entirely on the field trip to Upper Canada Village that I was made to endure at the impressionable age of 11.)
Anyway, I decided to make applesauce just because my family likes it, and prefers the kind with no mysterious additives. They also prefer it to have lumps, unlike the stuff you find at the store, which seems to have been extruded through some tiny screen for the purpose of safe consumption by people under the age of one. (I strongly feel the use of the word “extruded” in any food-related context is not a good thing.)
Before beginning this project, I actually paused (this is very unlike me—just ask anyone who knows me). I considered using this endeavour as a blog topic, and then thought of the various lovely food blogs I have come across in the past few months. I pondered the attractive photos I have seen, featuring apples, which are in season in Canada right now. I looked at the sorry specimens I had brought home from the store. Note the complete absence of photos in this post.
At this point, I identified various “un-Martha-like” decisions I had made and those I was anticipating making:
1. I chose the biggest apples I could find, and they were anything but photogenic. I did this because I didn’t feel like spending an hour peeling and coring a zillion small, beautiful ones.
2. I did no planning for this experience; I was in the store. I saw apples. I bought them.
3. My recipe (which exists only in my head) involves exactly four ingredients. By my estimation, that is about 127 ingredients shy of any cooking project Martha has ever undertaken.
4. I neglected to paint and re-floor the kitchen prior to beginning my task, thus risking an overwhelming sense of ennui as I worked. Martha would surely not have approved.
5. I peeled and cored the apples alone, instead of inviting a staff of 14 to assist me.
6. I wore no apron. Let alone one I had hand-embroidered using fabric I had home-spun from the wool provided by my small, obedient flock of Merino sheep. Which are so classy they don’t even smell.
7. I tossed the apples carelessly into a large pot. I did not lay the pieces in one at a time in order to construct an elaborate relief of Johnny Appleseed hiking through Pennsylvania.
8. I added water, turned on the stove, and left the room. Martha never leaves the room. But to be fair, she usually takes this opportunity to reach under her sparkling countertop and take out the completely cooked item, with a shameless, “How amazing am I?” flourish, as if one of her staff of 14 hadn’t placed it there when nobody was looking.
9. After a while (this is how specific my recipe gets), I returned to the kitchen, smushed up the remaining big pieces of apple, and turned off the burner.
10. I added a small blob of brown sugar (which I did not personally extract and process from sugar cane grown in my own climate-controlled greenhouse), and a spoon of cinnamon (which I did not go and pick from the wilds of Sri Lanka).
11. I mixed everything up, and spooned it into containers.
Surveying the results of my labour and inhaling the fresh scent of cooked apples, I was rather pleased with myself. I may not have a single Martha bone in my body, but my applesauce rocks.
Do These Words Make Me Look Fat? 