“We could use the Victorio Strainer machine,” I said to my beloved wife Marsha as we stand looking at a huge bag of apples. I’m referring to an old-fashioned gizmo we’ve had for decades. You cut the apples into quarters, heat them up to soften them a bit.
Then you dump them in the top of the machine, turn a crank, and apple sauce comes out into a bowl while the seeds and skins fall out the end. It’s a miracle and came on the market in 1937 for making spaghetti sauce. As with apples, the tomato seeds, stems and skins are separated and pure, thick tomato juice comes out the end.
“Nope,” she said, as she said every year. “I like chunky apple sauce.” “I like chunky apple sauce too, but I’m not crazy about peeling and coring 10,000 apples.
” “Hmmm,” she said sympathetically. Or, maybe she’s just humming Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me. Thinking back to our early years of making apple sauce, when we peeled every apple by hand and cut out each core with a knife, I thank my lucky stars for my secret weapon.
It’s another old-fashioned gizmo. An apple peeler, corer and slicer. You’ve seen them and have probably used one yourself.
You stick a clean apple on some prongs, turn a crank, and the apple gets peeled, the core gets reamed out and you end up with nothing but a peeled apple with a hole in it, sliced to resemble a Slinky. It is a marvelous tool and one that’s been around since 1864, invented by a clever guy named David Go.
