Monday, August 31, 2009

Apples

In an excellent preemptive score for my Super Frugal September, I got 10 grocery bags of free organic apples from my Great-Aunt's orchard for free. It must be a bumper year for apples, because all 10 bags are from a single tree, and they represent only about 1/10th of the apples on that particular tree.

I put both my kids and the kids we were babysitting today to work peeling apples with my apple peeler/corer. That thing kicks serious butt. Even taking into account the "no it's my turn" fights, the apple peeler/corer cut the hassle factor of preparing apples for pie and sauce by at least half.
I save the peels and boil them with brown sugar, water and cinnamon to make cinnamon apple pancake sauce. I think I might make this for Christmas gifts this year. I certainly have enough apples.

We made two pies today, one for our snack and one for the boys we were babysitting to take home as a birthday present to their dad. They were very excited about that.

All told today I made two pies, half a gallon of apple cinnamon syrup, froze a large bag of apples for crisps and pannekoeken and made a couple quarts of apple sauce and I'm about halfway through a single bag of apples. I may be visiting the food shelf for a donation before all is said and done.

2 comments:

  1. Lucky you! That's a great haul! I'm eager for our first trip to the apple orchard in a couple of weeks. Our apple tree will only give us 5 apples this year, which is 5 more than it has ever given us. But we'll have pears in abundance.

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  2. I'm jealous of your pears! I have been wanting to pick pears for a few years now and have never gotten around to it.

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