Apple Butter

I finally made apple butter! Sadly, no pictures. :(  But it's awfully similar to the persimmon butter method via slow cooker. Easy peasy. Here's what I used:

5 red apples
4 yellow apples
3 granny smiths
1/4 cup water
1 tbs vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbs cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pumpkin spice
1/2 tsp ground gloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Peel, core, quarter and chop all the apples. Place in slow cooker. Add water and vanilla extract. Add in the remaining ingredients. Mix it as best as you can. Cook on high for 4 hours uncovered, stirring at least every hour to ensure it doesn't burn. Once the apples are soft, I used a hand blender and pureed it. Afterwards, it cooked on low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Once thickened, the sauce was canned. Yummy! :D

Pineapple Butter / Pineapple Sauce

So, after making persimmon butter and pear butter successfully, le hubby had the amazing idea of taking any fruit and turning it into "butter." In the grocery store, he pointed out to plums, blueberries, then pineapples. I said no to the plums and blueberries because the butter would be more like a sauce or a jam. But, when he pointed out the pineapples, I said, "Hrm, sure. That just could work." So we grabbed a couple of pineapples and when we went home, I looked up a recipe. I used this one as a guideline: Pineapple Butter with Cardamom and Vanilla.

Ingredients that I used: 2 lbs freshly chopped pineapples, 2 cups chopped pears, 3 tbs lemon juice, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 cup water, and 2 tbs brown sugar (not shown).

Place all ingredients into a pot and cook until the fruits are soft.

All soft!

Took a hand blender and pureed it. It's pineapple-sauce!!

Cook a little longer....

Looks pretty thick. Pretty sure it's pineapple butter! :)

And canned! Twas mm-mmmm goood! And the taste is very exotic and tropical-like! Totally reminds me of hawaii. 

Pear-sauce

If you've ever had applesauce and really enjoyed it, you'll really like this homemade pear-sauce. It's super easy and all you need are pears and an orange! No sugar needed bc it's super sweet on its own!!

I used 10 ripe pears (from costco). If they are not ripe, they won't be sweet so it's totally worth it to wait until the pears are yellow-green. 

Peel, core and quarter the pears. Then place in a slow cooker.

Scrape an orange with a microplane for 2 tsp of orange zest and then juice the orange, pulp and all.

Add the 2 tsp orange zest and roughly 1/3 cup orange juice. Cook on high for 1 hour with cover to cook the pears. An hour later, break up the pears and stir so as not to burn the edge.

2 hours later, pear sauce should look like this. Cook for another 2 hours on high uncovered.

A total of 4 hours later, add in 2 tsp of pumpkin spice. Continue to cook.

An hour later, I used an immersion blender and blended the sauce. It's beginning to look a lot like applesauce. :)

Ta-da. It was mm-mmm yummy!!

And if you reduce it even further, you can get pear butter!!! I will do that next time for sure!!

Other pear butter recipes:

http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/easy-pear-butter-recipe/

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pear-butter/

White fish with Butter White Wine Sauce

Fish: I lightly salted, then steamed my thawed fish fillets for about 7-8 minutes or until cooked.

Butter White Wine Sauce: Melted 6 tbs of butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Added 4 cloves of minced garlic and 4 tbs minced shallots; cooked and stired until transparent, about 3 minutes. Seasoned with 2 tsp dried tarragon, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp white pepper. Increased the heat to medium, and stirred in 1/2 cup of white wine and juiced 1 big lemon. Brought to a simmer, then whisked for 1 minute. Removed from the heat and sprinkled in a bit of dried parsley. Poured over my steamed fish.

Pasta: Cooked pasta according to directions.
Pasta Garlic Cream Sauce: Browned 5-6 cloves minced garlic in 2 tbs butter. Added 1.5 cups heavy cream and lightly salted.

Serve with broccoli. This was a delicious and slightly decadent dish. It's super yummy! You HAVE to try the butter white wine sauce. The garlic cream sauce was made by my fiancee on a whim so it's not an exact recipe... SO delicious!!

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