Healthy Lunch & Awesome Sauce

I try to keep the kids’ lunches pretty healthy.  But I almost always still include some sort of treat.  I’m not sure if they eat it first or last, since I am not there to watch them chow down, but all of the food is usually gone so I’m guessing they totally eat the wonderful and healthy stuff first and save the treat for last.  I mean kids totally do that, right?

Anyway…

In my first lunch post I listed the assortment of things I like to include in their lunches here and there.  I almost always give the kids some sort of fruit, as well as a sandwich and usually a raw veggie too, like carrot sticks or pepper strips.

And my B LOVES apples.  Plus the little ones like applesauce a lot.

So, I thought, why not make my own applesauce?

Good old Pinterest helped me out by directing me to this recipe.

And then I proceeded to eat a fair amount of it myself before it even made it into the boys’ lunch boxes the next day.

What?!?

It’s mucho tasty! 🙂

The best part is that you can throw all of the ingredients into your crock pot and pretty much ignore it until it’s time to smash it up (I did stir mine a couple of times…) to make the awesome sauce (get it, awesome sauce… yeah….I’m a dork.  But y’all knew that.)

B and I agreed that it tastes kinda like apple pie filling.  I think I need to find some pie dough and use this for turnovers or something like that as well.  Like I said, very tasty.

Mine did turn out more “chunky” style but that is probably because I did not use a blender or food processor to smooth it out more.

Here is the easy-peasy recipe so that you can get to making your own apple sauce too!

Awesome (Apple) Sauce:

6-9 apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1 1/2″ chunks
1-2 tbsp sugar
1 cup apple juice or cider
pinch salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker.  Cover and cook until apples are very soft and begin to disintegrate  about 4 hours on low.  Mash apples thoroughly with potato masher (or blend with immersion blender).  Season with additional sugar/cinnamon to taste and adjust consistency with additional hot apple juice or cider as needed.

Recommended apples: Jonagold, Pink Lady, Jonathan, Golden Delicious, Empire, Mcintosh, Rome
NOT recommended: Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Braeburn, Cortland, Baldwin, Northern Spy, Honecrisp

p.s. I think next time I will add a bit of lemon juice so that maybe it will not turn quite as brown…

Let me know if you make this and what you think!

Don’t miss the other fun and helpful lunch posts in our series Beyond Bologna!

Sharon shared how to keep lunches at the right temperature along with a cornbread muffin recipe!

Angie showed us how to jazz up a veggie pizza for the kids’ lunch!

Nicole gave us so many healthy ideas for those silicone cups – hooray!

And Dumb Mom (what? she calls herself that) gave us a great recipe for some granola bites. Yum!