With just shy of 10K in on "Future Tense," I decided to take the day off from writing. Instead, I immersed myself in several bags of apples from our farm share. Well, immersed in a metaphorical sense. :)
Typically this time of year, I make applesauce. Well I had too many apples to ignore them and really not quite enough to pull out all the equipment to can applesauce. So I found the apple peeler/slicer/corer a friend let me have last year and cranked away a peck of apples into perfect slices.
I filled 8 shelves of the food dehydrator another friend lent me and ended up with 3 quart bags full of dried apple slices. Yum!
With the cores and peels, I made apple pectin as a precourser to jelly and jam. So several hours later, I have 3 pints of apple/grape jelly and 5 pints of blueberry/peach/apple jam cooling on the kitchen counter.
It made a rightous mess of the kitchen that took a bit of elbow grease to clean, but it was worth it. It was especially gratifying to take something that would have ended up in the compost heap and turn it into something we will enjoy all winter long.
And lest you think I'm some sort of back-to-the-earth, hippie-raised flower child, I grew up outside NYC, with parents who can't figure out where their youngest daughter got these strange hobbies.
If I can learn to can, bake bread, and figure out what to do with our weekly farm share, anyone can.
Tomorrow, back to writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment