So, our menus since Wednesday have been way off. You will definitely be seeing a couple of our meals repeated next week. Which is good, it will give my outlaws a chance to taste them. Dinner tonight is going to be long on cooking and short on attention, so I can keep up with the apples.

Now let's say that someone has over 100 pounds of apples to process and eat. Let's further say that said person is making applesauce. If said person has chickens who normally eat the peelings and bits cut out of apples, don't do it this time. Save the peelings and cores (except the really bad parts and buggy bits, those can go to the chickens, or to the compost bin if you have no chickens), and put them in a pot with enough just enough cold water to cover it, bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and cover and simmer to get the juice out. Strain it and use the juice to make jelly, give the mash to the chickens (make sure they are out on grass and get lots of greens and vegetable peelings that day as well), add the juice of a lemon or two if it isn't tart enough and ad about 3/4 cup of sugar to each cup of juice. Make your jelly, you won't need any pectin, because of all the pectin in the apple, but it will take longer than added pectin does. Seal as per normal. Another thing. If you want rosy colored apple sauce, save some of the redder, prettier peels to put on top while you simmer the apples and take it out when you mash it all up.

Today we are making applesauce, apple fruit leather, apple jelly, canned apple slices in light syrup, and apple pie filling for the freezer (just slice your apples, toss with the sugar and spices and put in freezer bags, then they are ready to make pie whenever you want. If you're really smart, you'll make pie crusts and freeze those, too). That apple pie idea was given to us from the organizers of the whole apple orchard trip. It is perfect because freezing it will burst the cell walls of the apple a little, which means you don't have to cook it as long, you can add less sugar and spice, which makes the apple taste come through as well.

I was going to make apple butter and jelly from the juice (which is how I make all fruit butters, so we get two products out of one batch of fruit), but we don't like apple butter enough to make a ton of it. What we really need is for someone to give us a few jars. Anyway, we also have some crabapple juice in the freezer from last year, so I'm going to make that into jelly as well.

This week we'll be having apple crisp, apple pie, apple turnovers, apple cake, apple muffins and so on. If after all our endeavors today, we still have a glut of apples, I'll freeze apple slices and chunks to put into desserts and quick breads throughout the winter, spring and summer. We might even dry some rings and vacuum seal them.

God is so good. We were too tired and busy with the baby to really tend our garden or go out harvesting, our berries didn't do as well this year because of all the rain, and I was thinking we wouldn't have much to put up for the winter, but here was a gift of all these apples. We are so blessed. When we are finished with the preserving, we'll have most of our Christmas presents finished as well.

Labels: Frugality, Homemaking, Homesteading, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen