344. Lobbing Apples At The Postman

The thing about fruit trees – a good thing admittedly – is that even a smallish tree is likely to provide copious amounts of fruit. In particular, apples, pears and plums. Two trees or more, and unless you’re the old woman who lives in a shoe, you’re going to struggle to use them.

You’ve eaten them for breakfast, lunch and dessert, and snacks in-between. You’ve made pies and crumbles and tarts and charlotte and tarte tatin. You’ve baked muffins and cakes. You’ve jarred up sauces and chutneys and jams. You’ve made fool, fritters and finicky pastries. You’ve brewed wine and made liqueurs. You’ve stored them on every shelf in the garage and you’ve risked botulism to put them in huge jars. You’ve covered them in toffee and shoved them on sticks. You’ve stewed, baked, puréed and fried them. You’ve bobbed them. Lambasted them. You’ve jumped up and down on them and pressed them into juice. You’ve given them away, lobbed them at the postman and thrown them for the dog.

           What should or could you do with the three tonnes that are left?

How about drying them?

For the last few years, I have been drying top fruit in my oven. The results are delicious (intense, surprisingly – although maybe not on reflection) and store very well – kitchen cupboards are fine. They are excellent in pack lunches and always impress the mother-in-law.

(Labour aside) if you have solar panels, making them can be free. One very useful device is an apple peeler / ringer / corer (£10 on Amazon – see photo). This cunning gadget is very useful in its own right (NB makes for a great Christmas present). Children love it.

 Apple rings
1.    On a sunny day (if you have solar panels)
2.    Core and ring 20ish apples (I don’t peel them – that’s where much of the goodness is)
3.    Arrange the rings on racks in the oven at 50C (or lower if your oven does it)
4.    Check after 2 hours (the apple rings in the photo were left for 3 hours which was a tad too long)
5.    Remove and leave to dry, ideally in a boiler room
6.    Store in paper bags in a kitchen cupboard

 


Plum halves
     1.    On a sunny day (if you have solar panels)
2.    Halve and stone 50 or so plums
3.    Arrange halves on racks in the oven at 50C (or lower if your oven does it)
4.    Turn off heat after 6 hours
5.    Remove overnight and leave to dry, ideally in a boiler room
6.    The next day, put back in the oven for another 6 hours. Possibly less.
7.    Again, remove overnight and leave to dry, ideally in a boiler room
8.    Store in paper bags in a kitchen cupboard

 Happy drying!
            And, if you are the old woman who lives in a shoe, then please get in touch. I’ll send you some.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

285. Been thinking about my last blog . . .

Image
. . . even if no-one else has. One of the implications of much of an apple's goodness (minerals and vitamins) being in its seeds is that to benefit they have to be eaten. And not just eaten but chewed up as apple seeds tend simply to be passed. I then remembered something about apple pips containing cyanide. I began to look into all this . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of web snippets on the benefits of eating apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and all that. But quite difficult to shore it up with trusted sources. A medium-sized apple weighs 150g - 200g and contains half that number of calories. 80% is water, 10% is carbohydrate, 0.5% protein and 4% minerals and vitamins. Half the minerals and vitamins and fibre are in the peel and the core. Apple pips contain amygdalin which can release cyanide when coming contact with digestive enzymes. According to the http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/contact-us/about-us/  (Cambridge University group) a...
Read more

319. We've got a dog!

Image
I know, I know . . . but I've kind of always wanted one . . . . . . from when I was very young, before I joined the Job, when I was thinking about joining the Job. I had a dream (I must have been 13 or 14, and I had lots of posters of dogs on my bedroom walls) about becoming a bearded-batchelor police dog-handler. In my dream I called the dog Wolfram . And guess what? We've called our dog  Wolfram ! He's so cute. He is, of course, an Alsatian and a good guard-dog. Which will be good because this is a big place and Sarah's away a lot. (The door-bell went off in the middle of the night last week, no-one there, turned out it was half-pressed in, but it didn't half freak me out.) Anyway, Wolfram is a new type of dog. Specially bred for people like me. He's a veggie. Eats like a horse of course, but and this is the point, he eats just like a horse. CRUCIALLY, he shits like a horse too. So, no smelly piles all around the garden but just the sweet...
Read more

73. Stuck for something to read?

Try a William Boyd novel. They hook you from the start, have interesting and original plots and are not overly long. What's more there are lots of them, and relatively easy to find in second-hand bookshops. Perfect for a holiday read, if you are stuck on a difficult novel or just want something a bit different. His books sometimes feel like he has written them with the aid of a special book-kaleidoscope: twist it again, 10 bizarre plot-lines fall out and Boyd glues them together in 300 pages. Try one!
Read more