No Half Measures

19 Sep 2020

I know it, you know it - whenever fall comes around, you get a craving for apples. Luckily we have access to a tree that produces wonderful apples every year, bunches of them, although we don’t actually know what kind they are. Tasty ones, that’s what matters.

Every year we pick a bunch of them, if we can. Measuring this year, we collected approximately 200 lbs of apples! Of course, once everyone else is done picking I’m still there, staring at the tree, getting just one more perfect apple because I totally need just a few more…

This is how we end up with about 200 lbs. Every year, to my delight and my husband’s exasperation, we go on this adventure. So what do you do with 200 lbs of apples that are quickly ripening - or borderline rotting - in your front porch?

As usual I made some apple butter, because we eat it on everything. I also tried my hand at apple jam this year, which was good but more work and nearly equivalent to apple butter in use anyway.

Some apples went to making apple cider, my only change would be adding less water, as the final product was not as strongly apple-flavored as I had hoped it would be.

Many others went to making apple pie filling to freeze. This makes really good apple pies, my only tweak would be reducing the ratio of filling-to-apples, perhaps by reducing the water. I ended up straining it when making pies because there was too much liquid and not enough apple pieces.

Lastly, some were chopped and frozen for future apple sauce!

And the final results, all nicely gathered together!

Nearly two years later, we used up the rest of the pie filling!