63 Pounds of Apples!

Perfect apples!

 Does that seem crazy?  What does anyone do with that many apples?

The first thing I do is go through and sort the apples.  The absolutely perfectly beautiful apples go in the refrigerator to be saved for eating later, and to give to special friends.  One rotten apple really does spoil the rest, so only a third of the apples make that cut.


Apples with minor imperfections get set aside in our "pie" bin.

Klenda makes really good pies!

We do make pies from some of them (or at least Klenda does - those are two of her caramel apple pies), but we use them for all sorts of cooking, like making these fritters. We have a peeler/corer/slicer that makes preparing apples fun and easy.

That accounts for another third.

The big jar is for her!

The last third are the apples that get bruised or nicked.  These will spoil quickly, so I cut them into quarters and drop them in a giant pot.  I add some whole spices and some apple cider, then cook them down into apple sauce.

The next day, I press the sauce through a colander to remove the seeds and peels, then we eat some apple sauce and use the rest to make apple butter.

I love making apple butter! I always make some for my dear SIL for Christmas (it's her favorite), and I think of her all day while the house smells like apples and spices!

Some of the "immediate use" apples actually get cut up for apple dippers (we dip them in caramel and peanut butter.

And, of course, there's a lot of just eating apples going on...

In the week since we went apple picking, we've used up about 50 of the 63 pounds!

Still planned: bobbing for apples, apple turnovers, and caramel apples.

Okay, nothing to do with apples, but, at Choclo's request, I made beer cheese soup in bread bowls for dinner ).   I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but this time I tossed some shredded cheese and sour cream in the bread dough (and  some powdered onion and garlic).  Yummy and beautiful!