Being a mom is hard.  What makes it harder is how hard we are on ourselves.  Personally I beat myself up so much emotionally.  I always question myself on whether I’m doing this whole mom thing right or wrong.

Maybe it’s just me but when you’re a first time parent everything scares you.  And it doesn’t help when people try to “help” you by giving you advice that just makes you feel worse.

I lie awake at night worrying about vaccines and the food I give my son or whether or not I made his bottle  with filtered water or not.  I told my husband once that I felt like a bad mom because that day I made his bottle up with water from the tap instead of filtered water–as if one time was really going to make a difference.

At some point you just have to get out of your head and honestly trust God.

 I do the very best I can do and the rest I have to leave to faith.

So why did I say all this?  Because I was super intimidated to make my child food at first and then I felt bad giving him store bought baby food.  I felt like a bad mom.  This is crazy!  Giving your child store bought food doesn’t make you a bad mom.

And then I thought that if I made him food I would somehow make it wrong and hurt him.  Again, CRAZY!

I just had to get over that, and I did!

Now I love making my child food.  I love knowing that I know exactly what’s in it.  I love coming up with new ideas and creating food I think he will like and will also be good for him.

We started off giving my son a lot of veggies. We really wanted him to get used to those first. Slowly we’ve been adding fruits and he absolutely loves apple sauce.

I’ve always enjoyed canning and I’ve canned many a jelly.  But I hadn’t really canned much apple sauce.   Again, this is what my son likes, so I kept buying it at the store, until it dawned on me that I could make it myself.

If you’re looking to save time, canning your own food is not the way to go.  It’s not fun peeling, coring and cutting 12 pounds of apples. On the other hand, knowing you did it yourself makes it worth the time.

If you stick to the directions, canning can be super simple.  But you don’t have to have a water canner to make apple sauce.  If you just want to make enough to have for a week and not months you don’t have to  water can your apple sauce.  I like having a lot of extra around so canning it makes more sense for me.

To make sugar-free (yep that’s right no sugar) apple sauce to save in the fridge, here’s a quick recipe you can follow.

You will need:

3 pounds of apples (roughly 6-10 depending on the size)

1 Tablespoon of lemon juice

Water

 Make sure to clean, core, peel and cut all your apples.

Add them to a cooking pot on medium-low heat. Add just enough water to prevent sticking.  Let the apples cook for about 5-20 minutes until they’re tender.  Stir often.  Then add the lemon juice. Cook for another 5-10 minutes more (you should be able break the apples up easily).

Above you can see that I used a water  bath canner to make my apple sauce (this is because I wanted my apples sauce to last a couple months).

Next blend you apples in a food processor to desired consistency.

And there you go!  You have apple sauce!

It’s really that easy.

And when you’re having one of those days when you’re just not feeling like a good mom.  Be encouraged, you’re not alone.  You’re a good mom and you can do this.