Ruralite Cafe: Published 11/16/00

By Lynn Hotaling - News Editor

Perfect apple butter is worth 25-year wait

And every time, as we'd sit peeling and chopping apples, Dona would talk about making apple butter outside, like her granny used to do. She'd go on about how much fun it was, and how much food the women brought.

She'd tell me about the three-legged stand, the big copper pot and the horse-head stirrer that was her great-grandpa's. Then she'd describe the apple trees at her grandparents' place by Fisher Lake near Bakersville. I'd have to hear about how the apple butter we were concocting at the time was good - real good - but it just wasn't up to what she remembered.

We always said we were going to make apple butter outside over a fire ourselves, but we never said when.

Ever since I've had wonderful old apple trees of my own and a flat spot by the creek for the cooking fire, I've increased the pressure on Dona to devote a day to apple butter. This year I got smart. As soon as I saw the bumper crop of apples on the trees, way back in July, I had Dona pick a date and mark it on her calendar.

Saturday was the day she chose. After collecting apples for a couple of weeks, I had at least three bushels of tart, crisp, yellow apples.

Richard made us a stand for the cooking pot, which wasn't exactly like the one Dona remembered. Ours wasn't copper, and it only held about five gallons or so. But it worked just fine.

The big day dawned clear and cold, and the fire felt good as we set about our preparations. It was like we were alone in the world in our sheltered little cove by the creek.

For awhile we both peeled and chopped, but then we specialized: Dona peeled, and I chopped. When you're peeling apples, you can't really think about anything else - not about 19-year-old daughters away at school or what you have to do tomorrow. You just peel apples.

Pretty soon we had the pot filled. For once, we had all day to visit and catch up on each other's lives. We couldn't leave the apples unattended, after all, so we mostly sat and talked - when we weren't eating fried chicken, biscuits and chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies.

We remembered the apples that grew around the old house at Rock Bridge, and the gallons of apple butter we'd made from them because we felt compelled to preserve their goodness. We couldn't stand leaving them to rot on the ground. We recollected old friends that passed through our kitchen back then and wondered where they are now.

Before we knew it, the fruit had cooked down by about half. The lumps were gone, and the apples had that certain look that we somehow recognized meant it was time to add the sugar.

Apple butter is quick once the sugar's in and the mixture comes back to a boil. It didn't seem like any time at all before it foamed up and took on the glassy appearance that signaled it was ready. We stirred in some 3 tablespoons of cinnamon, a compromise amount. It was was about half what Dona wanted and almost twice what I thought we should add.

It turned out to be just right.

Our apple butter is perfect.

It's fragrant and almost translucent. It's more like a jell than like applesauce, but it's nothing like jelly. It even comes complete with the tiny black specks that are the essence of the fire and locust wood.

"There's lots of kinds of apple butter, but this is my favorite kind," Dona said. Then she added the ultimate compliment. "This is like my Granny's."

When she opened a jar to go with her Sunday morning biscuits, Dona said she instantly visualized the day before: the creek, the fire, the work and the fun.

After we were finished, as we stood surveying our jars filled with excellent apple butter, we both wondered why we had waited so long to actually make the apple butter we had discussed for years, and why we hadn't asked more friends up to Wolf Creek to help. We started naming people we'd like to invite the next time around. Who knows, it may turn into an annual event.

I guess we did it by ourselves this time because we were both a bit apprehensive that the apple butter we had talked about for so long might not live up to our expectations.

And we were right. It wasn't like we envisioned it would be. Both the day and our apple butter turned out even better than we'd imagined.

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