Okay, I discovered this FABULOUS website/blog--crockpot365.blogspot.com/.  This chick made a 2008 resolution to use her crockpot every day all year, and as a result has amassed a fairly incredible body of recipes.  She even tried making homemade yogurt in her crockpot, successfully, which I think is awesome and which I want to try fairly soon. 

I discovered her when I was hunting around for an applesauce recipe.  Basic motivation: my kids would happily take applesauce for lunch every day, and the school has this "trash free lunch" policy going (not enforced, but I do think it's a good idea, and it's been surprisingly easy once I got on board.)--everything gets packed in little reusable tupperware-y things, which come home and get washed.  Yogurt and applesauce both are way cheaper this way, and it's not hard at all.

However, my desire to not generate any more trash than I have to also balks at buying the biggest Trader Joe applesauce jar, which is enough for both kids for maybe 2 or 3 days and seems just really wasteful.  So I wondered how hard it would actually be to make my own in the crockpot.

Not hard at all, as it turns out! I have one of those goofy core-peel-slice apple things that my mom gave me years ago, and it's a piece of cake.  And my kids enjoy it too, so it becomes fun.  So, this is more or less what I did:

HOMEMADE APPLESAUCE:

Core/peel/slice thinly about 14 apples. (I'm not sure about this...I had a 3 lb bag of small Braeburn apples and then 5 larger Grannys.) Throw in crockpot.
Add a few tbs brown sugar and/or maple syrup
Add spices--I used about 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp allspice, and 4 good shakes ground cloves.
If apples are sweeter variety, add a tbs lemon juice
Add 1 tsp vanilla extract
Add 1/4 cup water
Cook in crockpot on very low heat overnight.

This is all an approximation--I tend to "measure" spices in the palm of my hand.

Also, my big crockpot doesn't have a good seal on top, and cooks too hot even on low. So what I did was cook on crockpot low for about 4 hours until bedtime, and then I turned it to "warm" and left it on THAT overnight. I also put some towels around the top of the pot so less moisture could get out.

The GOOD part: by morning, the apples had cooked down into this lovely medium brown slush with a very gentle texture and fabulous flavor.  Serious yumminess, bearing no resemblance to anything one gets from a jar.  I could have gone with way less on the spices, I think, and I added lemon juice despite the apples already being really tart, but we all had some for breakfast--the kids by itself, hubby and me over oatmeal, and it was DELISH.

The NOT SO GOOD part: after all that, I only had two of the smallish Trader Joe sized jars of sauce.  So I doubt it's terribly cost-effective, and it's fairly labor intensive.  If I wait till fall when apples are fairly cheap, and make twice as much at a time (it's a big crockpot, I'm not sure how big but it's big), then it'd probably be worth it.  But I doubt if this'll be a weekly event around here, just to save two glass jars worth of recycling.  Now yogurt on the other hand...that's so damn pricey, I ought to definitely try that...

NEXT ON THE LIST: For one thing, I discovered that after maybe 4 hours in the pot the apples were cooked and soft and really beautiful, and would have made a wonderful side dish for pork or something.  An easy start-early-forget-till-dinnertime kind of thing.

For another, apparently making the applesauce pretty much as I did but sweetening it more, and then after it's cooked down to mooshy, cooking another few hours on low with the lid off will give you apple BUTTER.  So I may try that next...

peace,
J

UPDATE: After checking the shelves at TJ's and discovering that somehow I'd spent twice as much money on my homemade applesauce than the jarred stuff, and reflecting that mine (while incredibly delish) was a much darker brown than applesauce really oughta be, I realized that I had pretty much already MADE apple butter, but hadn't cooked it down quite enough...but it was still cooked down way beyond where applesauce should have been.  So I took my applesauce (the jar and a little that was left after breakfast today) and put it in a saucepan, and cooked it down for an hour on very low heat stirring often, and then attacked it with my immersion blender, and whaddya know, I now have apple butter.  Makes my frugal self much happier, even though the sauce version tasted incredible.  So I bought 6 more lbs of apples and will try applesauce again tomorrow.  Stay tuned for the reports...:-)