Food Mill Memories
by Kristi Gerritsen

About 20 years ago, when I was in high school, I worked in the kitchen of a local nursing home.  My mother's cousin, Bonnie, was the department manager and was very thrifty.

She very much enjoyed using fresh produce in the kitchen.  Two things that the kitchen workers looked forward to every year were the strawberry and apple seasons.  Besides having a lot of fun together, we would all get overtime working then.

Bonnie would enlist volunteers to help her pick strawberries every summer.  After a long morning of strawberry picking, we would return to her office, gather a bunch of chairs in a circle around some very large bowls of water, clean and hull all of the morning's treasures.  The strawberries would be put though the food mill, and then poured into large reserved plastic containers (usually from cottage cheese).  Most of the strawberries would go down to our storage room, and into one of several chest storage freezers for use at a later date.  The residents of the home would have fresh strawberries throughout the season, and still be able to enjoy them throughout the rest of the year.  Strawberry desserts were on the menu at least once every 2-3 weeks and were a big favorite!

Bonnie would also come back from a local orchard with bushels of apples every year.  Once again the chairs would be drawn in to a circle in her office, this time usually around a large tub of water,  We would rinse the apples in the water, then sit and slice them into quarters and toss them in steamer pans.  we had a large commercial steamer in the kitchen which would accept two very large steam table tray pans at a time.  Apples would be steaming almost the entire work day for two to three weeks,  leaving the kitchen (and the adjoining dining room) smelling terrific!  After the apples were steamed, we would once again put our three food mills to work making applesauce.  It would be sweetened a little and then stored in the reserved plastic containers.  The applesauce also froze very well in our chest storage freezers.

I have no idea how much fresh applesauce we made every year in this way, but it was always just enough that we never had to purchase the canned stuff.  To give you some idea of the size of our "applesauce overation" however, we had 115 residents, about 20 of whom wanted a dish at EVERY meal (as I remember, there was only 1 patient who did not like it!); the nurses used the applesauce to administer medications to most of the patients (usually a small medicine cup 4 time a day); and it was on the regular resident menu at least twice a month with the menu rotation.

Your mention of the foodmill applesauce sure brought back a lot of good memories of one of the most fun jobs that I have ever had.  Thanks!