Monday, November 10, 2008

Apples, apples everywhere...

No, not the computer kind!

We live fairly close to an abandoned apple orchard. We love apples, so all summer we have been watching the apples ripen and wondering if we could get some. Finally, I contacted the owner and got his permission to pick some. Because of all kinds of other things going on (AAR being one of them), we were unable to get to them until last Tuesday. Even then, it was getting dark by the time we got there.

It had frozen several times, so some of the apples that were hanging on the trees were just mush. But, some were very good. We also managed to get a good number of windfallen ones. All told, in about 45 minutes we got about 1.5 bushels. That's a lot of apples, but we love apples, so we figured we would use them all.

Since many of them were windfalls, we needed to process them right away. So, last Tuesday and Wednesday night, we made apple sauce—lots of it. Tuesday night I made 10 quarts, Wednesday night we made pints—21 of them, but we love apples. I add it to my home made yogurt for a sweetener.

I wanted to make apple butter, but it would have taken too long for the apples to cook down enough. Maybe next year...

We still love apples, but that was a little much for the middle of the week. I don't want to handle another apple for a while. Next year I think we'll pick them on a Friday night or Saturday.

3 comments:

Joel and Renée said...

You can still make apple butter, just use the apple sauce that you made last week.
Here's a recipe:
http://www.pickyourown.org/applebutter.htm

Brandon said...

I fully expect to see some apple pies at Eisenbrauns table at SBL. ;-)

jps said...

Renee,

Thanks for the link. I think we will do that this weekend.

Brandon,

Not likely for two reasons: 1. Apple sauce makes terrible pies. 2. they wouldn't travel well! :)

James