Fall season is here in New England and is a great apple year. Just a thought on the humble apple. Tried to buy some Cortlands to dry, tart hard apple, fairly good keeper, in controlled atmosphere storage they are good until next year if eaten soon after opening and kept cold. Cheapest hand picked ones at orchard were about $1 a pound. Not cheap, bought 10 pounds, not a peck, looked beautiful, pealed them to dry. None had been handled correctly, almost all had picking bruises where it was either dropped into bag or dropped into skid. Pure carelessness and they will not keep. Small discoloring and softness will spread thru whole apple in a couple of weeks. Tried second orchard, same results, at last picked my own, $1 a pound also. No bruises so they will keep. Need one of these to pick apples, bag opens up and apple rolls into box. Drop an apple 6 to 8 in on to a second and you can't keep either one. Grandad said only difference between handling eggs and apples was that with eggs you knew when you had ruined them. Gramps had his priorities straight, sneak down in the orchard with a girl and make out OK, drop an apple into bag or dump bag into box and you got your ears blistered. Wells & Wade fruit picking bags, buckets, at PHG Apples are a gift from God. You can use the wood to smoke meats and jerky, it is a good heating wood, it is good to carve and has an interesting grain pattern for a lot of small projects. It splits well and with a froe and a chunk of log, you can get some really interesting "olde time wood" effects. You can dry apples, make apple butters, freeze them, can them, make vinegar from them, make apple jack with an alcohol content about that of wine or make a fine brandy if distilled or even a fuel and disinfectant if that turns you on, make vinegar from them, use the peels to make pectin for your jellies, etc. While not practical, the seeds in self defense contain a chemical that breaks down into cyanide. Apple seeds: What happens if you eat them? With the dried apples, you can eat them as a treat, chop up and put in breakfast food, make dried apple pies, crisps, etc, make more apple butter or apple sauce. Apples 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits That article does a better job than I can in explaining the food values There are several excellent posts on the vinegar uses of apples. I would like to see your views and experiences with apples and hopefully add to this start of a post.
One view of drying apples. Super Easy Methods for Drying Apples - DryingAllFoods And a few recipes.with dried apples. Can make into apple sauce and use the same as fresh or canned. Recipes With Dried Apple Pieces with ingredients,nutritions,instructions and related recipes And a different view of apple cider vinegar from another blog. 101 Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar And then using the vinegar to make switchell' Refreshing Ginger Honey Switchel Recipe And cheating to make apple cider vinegar using Braggs live culture for your first batch. Can use your own blend after that. Make Your Own Vinegar "Mother" Decided that if I were to make some apple cider vinegar and age it, I should get a bourbon barrel to age it in. Went down to dealer and ordered a barrel. They quoted a price of about $10,000 for the barrel. Seemed high, but inflation has been high, so I bought it. Went down today to pick up barrel and I have a problem with it. It is full, about 50 gallons of Jack Daniels single barrel select. Now I have to empty the barrel in order to make the vinegar. I guess that is this winter's project. All joking aside, you can buy full barrels and while I don't drink, a couple hundred gallons might be good trade goods. Nah, even that is to far out. How Much Is A Full Barrel Of Whiskey? – BigMoonshine
We have a monster of a crop of apples this year, way more then expected, and they are super sweet and juicy, perfect for making cider! I got the press drug out, the stones cleaned and the rollers polished up real nice, just need to disinfect the whole thing and set it up for Dad to run while sittin in his easy chair bossin us all around! LOL Should be able to put up about 25 gallons of good drinkin cider, and the rest for vinegar and apple sauce! Any left over will be fermented and made into schnapps! Also had a real bumper crop of high value Mint, so we got tons of it still needing to be harvested and freeze dried and packaged, will hand sort out a bushel to keep on hand for cooking and baking needs, and may run a batch through the press before the last apples for my special cider!
