Apples, apples & more apples.........

Hello Campers,
Well, what a humungous crop of apples we've had from our old tree this year, which is good because the pears have been pants, but even the ever-resourceful me is going to struggle to use them all up creatively. The Big Hairy Half of the Relationship went up the ladder brandishing the apple-pole at the weekend, while I stood underneath catching them & loading them into a crate on the wheelbarrow......a very useful crate which had been fly-tipped behind the bottle bank at Waitrose, to be rescued by me (surely I can't be the only person who goes to the recycling banks & then comes home with stuff?) 

We stopped when we'd gathered this many. This is only about 1/4 of the crop, & that's without counting all the windfalls I've been picking up over the past month. Back in the kitchen, I went into sort of 'triage' mode. Apples were divvied up into 'ICU' (for using asap....you know, the ones with all the little nibbles out of them, bruises, that kind of thing), then 'Walking wounded'....those which wouldn't keep long-term but are fine to put in the fruit bowl to eat when I fancy one. 

They're really nice apples, actually. They cook well, but left to redden, they are also good eaters. It's a big gnarled old tree we inherited when we moved in. I wrapped the best apples for storage. I'd love some of those lovely old wooden apple storage racks but they are such silly money that I always use a budget option for this job. Newspaper!

I just line a crate with newspaper, then making sure each apple is clean & dry, and more importantly, in good condition, I wrap each individual fruit in newspaper. The crate needs to be stored somewhere cool & dry. I've done it this way for a few years & while it's normal for me to find one or two have gone mushy, the majority of them store just fine, meaning that I can eat my way through them or use them for cooking for much longer.

We turned 3lbs of the ICU bucket into brown sauce on Saturday. I've also made blackberry & apple jam, apple chutney, Cranks' apple & ginger chutney (just bubblng on the hob as I type), apple sauce, apple & cinnamon muffins, as well as eating stewed apples with oats for breakfast. Am still aiming to make apple & ginger loaf cake, apple buns, Norwegian apple cake, plenty of apple sauce for the freezer & apple & ginger jam. The Carnivore-in-Chief has also roasted a shoulder of pork on a bed of sliced apples and I've used some in a curry sauce. When I've exhausted all my regular recipes, I shall look for some new ones.
You see, there will be appley endeavours all week.......but our tree still looks like this......

.....there are HEAPS more! 

Albert Whiskers hadn't encountered the apple-pole before. He came out to give the proceedings the once-over, but. when he'd established that none of it was going to result in his dinner being plated up any earlier, he soon trotted off for a rest, so as to work up the energy for his Really Big Snooze later on. I have never known such an utterly bone-idle cat!
Nearly bottling time, house smells gorgeous!
Talk to you soon,
C x