Corissa Morales

The DH and I recently went (actually, it was more than a month ago) apple picking at Carver Hill Orchards. I’ve been trying my hand at home preserving this year (jury’s still out) and decided to buy extra apples to “put up” this year. The lady at the farm stand was giddy when we asked for the half bushel bag – happy to have supported local farmers. We went early in the season so many of the good baking apples weren’t ready yet, but Cortland are pretty versatile, so we loaded up on those.

Originally I was going to preserve apple pie filling, but decided against it because I’ve made a whopping 1 apple pie in the 9 years I’ve been with my husband…seemed silly to store 7 quarts of apple pie filling when I couldn’t be sure I’d even use them. So I decided on apple sauce. It was *incredibly* easy to make and DH admits its the best he’s ever had (just humoring me? maybe.)

Ingredients
10 pounds apples
2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick*
6 TBS lemon juice
1 cup white sugar

Peel, core and quarter the apples. Load them into a deep pot and add remaining ingredients. Bring water to boil, reduce to medium heat and boil for 20-30 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and mash any remaining chunks of apple. Yielded about 3 quarts (though I chose to can 1/2 pints and refrigerate 1 quart)

*Lesson learned about the cinnamon stick: I thought I’d be clever and smash the cinnamon stick to “get more use” out of it. Guess who spent 30 minutes fishing bits of spice out of what felt like gallons of apple sauce.

I chose to use my pressure cooker to make the apple sauce since I was short on time. The one rule I follow strictly when using the 10 pound beast is the fill limit – 2/3 capacity including food and liquid. This meant that I had four apples hanging out that had already been peeled and cored…what to do? Dried apple rings!

Using my mandoline to ensure even slices I quickly cut the remaining apples into 1/4″ slices and laid them out in a single layer on several baking sheets. I set my oven to 200°, but if you have an efficient oven I’d reduce that to 175° – 180°. After 2 hours I flipped the apples (also, you may consider switching the sheets around if the bottom ones are drying faster than the top) and dried for 2 more hours. Yielded about 2 pints.

For a super sweet treat toss the rings in cinnamon sugar before they have fully cooled!

Garden update:

In order to make sure I have gorgeous strawberries for DH’s smoothies next year I pre-winterized today. I dug the plants (and their many daughters!) out of their apartment garden containers and moved them to a clear large size tote, gave them one last healthy watering and covered them with the lid. When the time comes (another month or pre-first frost) I’ll bury them in a thick layer of moist mulch and tuck away.

Apartment garden tip: winterize your strawberries in a clear tote that can double as next year’s sprouting greenhouse!

I also took a look at the compost totes and I’m really really happy with how they are looking. Not too bad for a first year amateur’s attempt at composting if I might say so myself. My kitchen waste and garden clippings have composted so well that I was able to bring 2 bins down to one.

Apartment composting tip: Tamp down your bins by stomping around in them (with a pair of boots of course!), then place them in the sunniest spot possible. This will ensure you get the maximum heat possible to properly breakdown everything you put in there.

Drying more hot peppers: