Homemade Applesauce

(Makes 5 cups)

Ingredients

• 5 pounds apples, preferably a mix of tart/sweet and green/red
• 1 cup apple cider
• 2 cinnamon sticks (3 inches each)
• 1 teaspoon whole allspice berries
• ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 to 6 tablespoons sugar or light brown sugar, to taste
• ¼ cup Calvados* or brandy (if desired)

Directions

1. Peel green apples, and remove cores and seeds; cut each apple into 8 pieces.
2. Core and remove seeds from red apples (do not peel red apples; cooking with peel will impart a beautiful rosy color to your applesauce), and cut each apple into 8 pieces.
3. Place all apples in large, heavy saucepan, and add cider, cinnamon sticks, allspice, and nutmeg. Cover and bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Cook for 30 minutes.
4. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook, covered and stirring frequently, until apples have completely broken down into thick sauce, about 30 minutes. Add sugar to taste, and the Calvados if desired, and cook for 10 minutes longer.
5. Pass applesauce through a food mill or a coarse sieve to remove any remaining skins and solids (discard solids). Set sauce aside to cool, or enjoy warm. Store covered in refrigerator for up to 1 week.

*Calvados is an apple brandy from the French region of Lower Normandy.

Emeril’s Homemade Applesauce The Saturday Evening Post

Apple just announced its brand new iPad, and it’s an absolutely gorgeous piece of computing power. It’s got a stunningly brilliant printed-paper-quality 2084 x 1536 display. It’s got a powerful new 5-megapixel camera, with auto focus and white balance control. It’s even got blazingly fast 4G that you can use as a wireless hotspot, if you’re willing to pay for it. But is it the right tablet for you?

Maybe, maybe not. Before you shell out $499 — or more — for a new tablet, consider whether your new piece of tech is a need … or simply a want.

Why you want to upgrade to the new iPad:

Because the new iPad is darned cool. There’s no way around it: Apple products define cool. You look at those holding iPads on the commuter rail with envy. Your friends — at least your technologically-minded friends — have one. Your kids are going to put it on their holiday shopping list. It’s trendy in a way that no other tablet can hope to match. If staying on top of trends is important to you, then the new iPad is going to be a hands-down must-have gadget.

Because you didn’t buy the iPad 2. If you skipped the iPad 2, this might be a phenomenal time to grab the new iPad. After all, the iPad 2 added a slew of features to the already-awesome original iPad, such as a front-facing camera and a better processor. Since the new iPad adds a whole bunch of features to what you already missed out on, it represents a massive technological leap over what you already own. Faster processor. Better resolution. Better camera. And 4G LTE for faster internet on the go — it’s all pretty hard to beat.

It’s hard to get better. The new iPad has a lot of undeniably cool features, like better-than-HD resolution, a powerful camera, and 4G wireless. These features are so cool, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine the iPad 4 being significantly better on either of these fronts. After all, if your eyes can’t tell the difference, why increase the resolution? Is there any point to putting a better-than-5-megapixel camera in an iPad? And 5G wireless internet is years away — something we’ll likely be enjoying for the first time on our iPad 9s or possibly even iPad 12s.

Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t some avenues where an iPad 4 can better this latest iteration, namely in processor and battery life. But if you keep putting off your purchases by saying “the next one is bound to be better,” you’ll likely never buy another piece of tech in your life.

Why you don’t want to upgrade to the new iPad:

Money is a factor. Clocking in at $499 on the low end, a brand new iPad isn’t within everyone’s budget. And to get the most out of your iPad, you’re probably going to need to shell out a few hundred extra to get the 4G wireless. That’s the bad news. The good news, of course, is that the presence of the new iPad makes the iPad 2 cheaper — both new ($399 from Apple) and used. And if you really want to save some green, check out our selection of the 8 best tablets currently on the market.

You just don’t need a tablet. There’s no denying that iPads are cool. They’re Star Trek-level tech in the palm of your hand. But do you really need one? Probably not — there’s really nothing you can do on an iPad that you can’t already do on an iPhone or a home computer.

You prefer a smaller option. The new iPad clocks in at 9.7″, just like its predecessor. Plus, it’s slightly bulkier than the iPad 2. That’s still small, sure, but if you’re all about portability, the far cheaper Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet both have a real advantage. Besides, it’s rumored that we’ll be getting a smaller, more portable iPad later this year. It may be worth sitting on your hands … for now.

You’re going to do most your computing at home. One of the most compelling features of the new iPad is the higher-speed 4G LTE internet connection that’s usable as a wireless hotspot. It’s really the only must-have new feature — most of the rest merely represents upgrades over what’s already there. If you’re planning on spending most of your time with your new iPad via a WiFi connection, then you don’t really need 4G.

Any piece of brand new Apple technology is hard to resist, and we’re going to have a lot of trouble holding on to our purse strings over the new iPad, even if it is easier than ever to sell our iPad 2s. Still, before you get out that credit card, it’s worth considering that if the existing features of the iPad 2 make you happy, you’ll probably be better off saving up your money for the fourth-generation iPad. After all, it’s only about a year away.

Is Now the Right Time to Buy a New iPad? The Saturday Evening Post

So what is “the cloud,” exactly? And can you trust online storage providers with gigabytes (GB) of your personal contacts, health and financial records, and maybe even your collection of unfinished Elizabethan love sonnets?

To answer that question a little background is required. First, the cloud isn’t literally up in the sky. Instead, it consists of a massive farm of “servers,” or computers. The name derives from the fact that data and software are all delivered as a service over the Internet rather than as a product that sits in your hard drive. Cloud technology isn’t new. Businesses and governments have warehoused information on Internet-connected servers for years. The big shift taking place now is that consumers—you and me—are getting our heads in the clouds as well.

This change is possible because of the exponential increase in Internet speed. Thanks to high-speed broadband to the home via cable, DSL, and fiber optic services—as well as speedy 3G and 4G cellular for mobile phones and tablets—you no longer need files to be near you to access them.

The beauty of this technological advance is that you can get stuff down from the cloud from anywhere. Want to hear a song that’s not in your phone’s meager storage? Punch in your password and there it is. Same with your tax information, email, and those Elizabethan-style poems. Another benefit—your files are easy to recover, even if your phone, tablet, or laptop is lost or stolen. And some cloud services automatically transfer, or sync, files between your various digital devices including phones and PCs.

Take iCloud, for instance. Not only does it back up your files to Apple’s massive farm of servers, the service also directs digital media to other Apple devices you own, provided they’re running either OS X Lion (on a Mac) or iOS 5 (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) software. For example, let’s say you own an iPhone and an iPad. When you buy an ebook from Apple, iCloud automatically sends a copy of the book to each device.

As you would imagine, there’s a price tag for such benefits. Apple users start with five GB of free storage. That could fill up quickly. Extra capacity costs $20 for 10 GB, $40 for 20 GB, or $100 for 50 GB per year. Other cloud providers offer free storage, too. Online retailer Amazon provides 5 GB, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive offers a more generous 25 GB. Dropbox, a popular cloud service that automatically syncs files between digital devices—including Mac and Windows PCs as well as many smartphones and tablets—offers 2 GB. Box, a Dropbox competitor, gives you 5 GB. Of course, you can always buy more storage if you need it. And Carbonite, an online backup service, warehouses an unlimited amount of your data for a flat fee of $59 per year.

But can cloud providers prevent data-stealing hackers and other ne’er-do-wells from accessing your files?

All of these services use strong, industry-standard encryption to encode your data, a security measure that makes your files incomprehensible to any snoops trying to access them. Of course, your account is password-protected, too.

Cloud company workers can’t access your data. As you might expect (and hope), cloud vendors take privacy very seriously. If they suffer a major security breach, their customers will flee. The bottom line: Yes, cloud storage is safe, provided you warehouse your sensitive information with a reputable firm.

The future is indeed cloudy—and that’s good news.

Life in the Cloud The Saturday Evening Post

Spiced Cider

“Spiced” Cider

• 1.5 part Tuaca or Frangelica
• 1 part apple cider
• Garnish with whip cream and cinnamon

For party-sized batch:

• 1 (750ml) bottle Tuaca (can replace with Frangelica)
• 1 pint apple cider
• 4 cinnamon sticks

Mix together and serve with whip cream.

“Spiced” Cider The Saturday Evening Post