Smells Good!

The most wonderful aroma has been coming out of my kitchen! I have been making apple butter! It must be the time of year that brings on the urge to once again fill my crock-pot with chopped apples and delicious spices. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg and cloves sprinkled over the apples with sugar and a pinch of salt combine for a delicious treat, whether for a breakfast biscuit or mixed with peanut butter for a sandwich!

When I once mentioned to one of my daughter-in-loves that I had made some apple butter, she commented on what a long, tedious process it is. She hadn't yet discovered how easy it is today, because several years ago an elderly church member had come to their house and helped them make apple butter, which consumed nearly the whole day, stirring and standing over the stove.

If I remember right, I think my mother and grandmother once made apple butter in a big black pot over a fire in the back yard. I do definitely remember their making soap that way once. I couldn't figure out part of the soap recipe Grandma left behind, when it called for "monkey blood." I found out later that was Mercurochrome (or was it iodine) put in as an antiseptic. This was in the mid-forties.

But back to apple butter. Mama didn't routinely make it, but she bought a lot of it. The apple butter mixed with peanut butter was put in biscuit sandwiches that we carried to school in a tin pail for our lunch. As a first-grader, I got tired of that regimen, then one day the teacher traded me a sandwich on store-bought "light bread" for my biscuit. She said she loved biscuits, but never had time to make them. I think she was just being kind. She was always my favorite teacher!

Cooking and methods of preserving food have advanced since then, but some things never lose their appeal, such as the fragrance of spicy apple butter wafting through the house. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 2:15, "For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish." The best fragrance of all!