Apples

So its fall!

At least that's what my calendar is telling me.

I suppose if I were to sit and think on it...

It feels like fall too.

The air is cooler.

(Not so stifling and heavy)

The geese are honking their goodbyes.

The nights are beautiful!

(no bugs)

Not to mention, my calendar says its fall today...officially.

When its fall we pick apples.

Certainly not the first time.

Definitely not the last time.

We have picked apples at local farms too!

What makes this year a little different is that our favorite trees are heavy with fruit.

My sister in law has several GREAT apple trees.

The past few years have been hard on them.

Serious winters, porcupine damage, deer thieves...

These trees hardly stand a chance!

And yet this year they are spectacular!

(and luckily for us, they are right around the corner)

We drove up one evening to grab the apples before the deer at them all.

Owen was pretty annoyed that there was only one picking tool to be had...

So I made him the official apple picking photographer.

At 8 years old...he's not to bad!

Apple picking action!

I remembered the cloth in the picking tool this time...

No I didn't bring rum to pick apples...although...

We also scored a cabbage too!

(Located in the nearby veggie garden))

And in case you are wondering...

Here is a handy post that describes what we do with all of those apples.

And if you are interested...

I have posts on Apple and Havarti Quiche

As well as Parsnip Apple and Brie here.

Both are well worth trying!!!

I promise! 

What to do with all those Apples...

One bright and sunny Thanksgiving weekend day...

We picked a 10lb bag of apples.

It didn't really take us long...I probably could have picked the whole bag myself in 15 mins.

Seriously...not a difficult task...until you go to store these things!

I know you can store apples in a cool dark place for a few months into the winter.

I just hate the thought of one bad apple in the middle of the bag...rotting away...

So I went straight to keeping as much of the bag as I could with minimal waste or spoilage!

While I've made applesauce before...I've never jarred it for future use.

This was an awesome feat for me!

It usually smells so good when its boiling down...we eat it right away.

3 jars of applesauce now live in our food storage area.

While one can live without applesauce...it is a nice sweet addition to any pork dish.

Owen even likes dipping his potato latkes in applesauce!

Plus no preservatives or weirdness when you make your own...

Another first for me was the apple chip.

Slice thinly and sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar.

Like the tomatoes,  I tried both the dehydrator and the oven method.

Both worked well...but the apples took over 14 hrs in the dehydrator.

I must have sliced these apples way too thick...so I finished them off in the oven the next day.

Owen seemed to really like them at first!

Then that trailed off....must have gotten a few cinnamon heavy chips...

Frozen!

Ok...anyone with a little person these days knows that movie...

These are peeled and sliced apples in a freezer bag...

perfectly portioned so that all I have to do is pour them 

evenly into a baking dish and add crisp topping.

WAAAAAAY TO EASY....

Dangerously easy...

As nothing gets truly wasted at this house...I present to you...the chicken treat!

Once I had peeled, cored and chopped my fingers sticky...I took out the bowl to the girls.

They loved this sweet treat!

What do you do with your apple harvest?

Apple Picking and other Fall things...

Over Thanksgiving (second weekend in October here in Canada)

we spent the weekend with my mother and her man in Brighton.

Brighton is a fantastic place to be in the fall!

Historically, it's major industry was APPLES!

They have an Applefest celebration in September.

They block off the streets to showcase everything to do with apples.

Naturally, we thought this was the place to go apple picking!

Turns out it was a perfect day to pick apples and

Everyone else had the same idea too!

I love the shapes and colours of fall...every size, shape and colour of squash...

Get them now, for they store really well in a cool room most of the winter!

No hydro required.

The funky blue one is a Blue Hubbard squash...I'm seriously tempted to grow these things!

Of course the pick-your-own farms have the usual silliness for family entertainment...

I do love a good apple pun!

(get it...MACintosh apples...)

We love Macs because they are good for just about anything!

Pies, crisps, freezing, baking or just eating plain.

Cricklewood Farm also offered pick your own pumpkins!!!

But better still...they had PICK YOUR OWN FALL RASPBERRIES!

I had no idea such a thing existed...

So, of course we set out to pick one very large pint!

Super sweet...those cool nights does a berry good.

The last time I was at Cricklewood Farm with Owen, was an equally great weather day.

We did the enormous corn maze which changes every year.

The farm was NOT this busy though...but the staff handled it beautifully.

What a great place to stop and spend an afternoon!!!

Also, a guy showed up driving THIS...I was dying to steal it!

I highly recommend this place if you are even close to the area of Trenton or Brighton Ontario.

Stay tuned on a post dedicated to everything we did with 10lbs of apples!!!

Corn Maze!

Owen and I had the opportunity to try out a corn maze recently.

I had never been to a corn maze...but I'd always wanted to.

Corn mazes are a wonderful way to spend an afternoon outside, enjoying nature, supporting local business, supporting your local food producers and after the maze season is over...the farmers harvest the corn!

We were in Brighton visiting my Mom at her cottage in Presqu'ile Park.

She introduced us to Cricklewood Farm...

It was a lot more than just a corn maze!

We showed up on a fairly hot day and we were sure to bring lots of cold drinks.

We went into the farm store to see what we needed to know before starting out on the corn maze trek.

Above, Owen is pictured with the info board inside the farm store.

We were greeted by some very friendly ladies who explained everything we needed to know.

There were a few rules to follow while in the maze:

-no smoking

-no running, no bare feet

-do not pick corn

-no short cuts (it damages the maze)

-an adult must accompany anyone 15 yrs or younger

-dogs must be leashed and scooped

-no drugs or alcohol (its trippy enough in that maze without extras!)

They gave us some take away pamphlets with more information.

Not just about the corn, Cricklewood farm features lots of produce including many, many kinds of apples.

I had no idea there were this many kinds of apples!?!?!

Owen was really getting into the whole experience!

(Pictured here with apple picking carts)

Cricklewood farms has dwarf trees for easy pick your own apples.

They are also introducing some experimental types...ready in the next few years.

There's no stopping Owen...on with the corn maze already!

The corn maze itself was amazing!  (sorry about the pun)

There were 2 mazes to try:  one was a small toddler maze, which took about 15mins max.

The other was the giant 6 acre maze that took an hour and a bit.

The toddler maze featured little sign posts that detailed the life of "Kernie the Kernel"

We read all about how Kernie starts as a seed, gets planted, then grows up to be a big strong corn plant with lots of healthy ears.

The giant maze offered something similar, but way more involved.

We were given a sheet all about this year's corn maze theme.  There were word searches, definitions, wildlife in trouble and a cross word.  All activities were centered around wildlife.

Above is a selection of the mazes of the past. 

Each year they design a new one and an aerial picture is added to the large collection. 

This year, Cricklewood Farms partnered with the CWF (Canadian Wildlife Federation) to produce this year's theme "The American Badger".

Once finished the maze, we were happy to find the rest area for visitors to the farm.

A picnic area...

An apple maze you trace with your finger to help the worm get to the center of the apple and back out again...

A hay mountain (which the brochure states is for kids and adults)...

And those boards your put your head through and take pictures...my pumpkin!

All in all it was a great afternoon!

I urge you to check out some wonderous fall activities, which can include, but are not limited to:

-pumpkin patches

-apple picking

-corn mazes

These activities can be found at your local pick your own farm...

or click on the link below:

http://www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org/CAONpumpkins.php

Don't forget the apple cider!!! 

Apples & Havarti Quiche...

Like most meals, this post started out as an idea and one that we weren't sure if it was one that would work. 

We had oodles of apples.  We borrowed the picking machine and went

to town on our neighbour's apple tree.  (we had permission, just in case you were wondering) 

We have lots of havarti.

Wilton cheese is the fundraiser this year for kindergarten

kids at Prince Charles Public School in Verona.

We had these lovely red apples from my mother in law's trees. 

We got a total of 2 milk crates full of red apples and 

2 milk crates and one cardboard box of green apples from the neighbour's tree. 

What do you do with that many apples?  On a rainy day...you set up a station at a big table with lots of light and line up a couple of good movies!  We created an assembly line of sorts.  Peeling, chopping, slicing, rinsing and bagging was a great way to pass the afternoon. 

The topic of dinner came up after a while.  What were we going to make?  Looking around I began to wonder if I could come up with a dinner that involved apples.  I saw a huge bowl of eggs in our fridge.  Earlier we had pulled out some frozen pie crust dough...we made an apple pie, freezing it before we cooked it fully.  We managed to get 2 large freezer bags of sliced apples into the freezer for future pies or crisps.  Ches made an apple crisp too!  We ate it for dessert after our apple entree. 

APPLE & HAVARTI QUICHE



This was a basic quiche recipe.  We had home made crust dough in the freezer, so all we had to do was thaw it out and blind bake it off with beans.  Ches added the filling....blended eggs, milk, chopped apples, shredded havarti, nutmeg, S & P.  Bake until cooked.

Served with a fresh garden greens salad!  It was wonderfully sweet, an unexpectedly delicious dinner.  The apple crisp dessert was great too!  Now I'm craving apple cider...

What weird apple recipes have you come across? 

PS.  Have any of you ever been to the Apple Fest in Brighton?  Totally worth a trip one year...

Storing your garden goodies...Late summer edition

I find this to be a very busy time of year.

The garden is bursting with goodness and I'm either not home enough to make meals at home or too busy to actually be in the garden.  Sigh.  Unfortunately this is the WORST time of gardening season to be so busy!  There is so much of everything ripening that it seems like a huge waste to le it all go bad.

We are currently swamped in tomatoes and apples we've been given by my mother-in-law.  What to do with 7 baskets of tomatoes and a milk crate full of apples?  Well, this post is all about what we DID do with them!  Below is my wonderful husband.  He's carrying our hard work from Saturday (after we checked out the Verona Garlic Festival).  We knuckled down and peeled until our fingers hurt. 

What we ended up with was the following:  4 large freezer bags of chopped apples (ready for plopping into a pie shell or under a crisp topping), 2 large freezer bags of tomatoes, washed, rinsed and scored (so the skins with come right off of them when we make soup this winter), 3 containers of tomato sauce.  All ready for the freezer and will provide fresh summer goodness all winter long.  YUM!

The best was the apple sauce we made from scratch!  Sounds impressive, but once you find out how easy apple sauce is to make...you'll never want to buy store bought again!  (That's kinda the point, after all)

Take a whole buncha apples, you can use almost any type or apple.  Although I do know some apple purists who swear you can only use certain types.  A quick Google search will tell you to "Make sure you use a good cooking apple like Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Fuji, Jonathan, Mcintosh, or Gravenstein."  I'm sure there is a reason why, but I only use what I have, so whatever Nana grows is what we use.  You don't have to be picky about the quantity of apples, because you can adjust the taste as you go!

You chop and peel the apples and unless you have a herd of pygmies working for you, you may want to use this trick.  Have a bowl of cold water and lemon juice handy.  Place the peeled and sliced apples in the lemon water until you are ready to use them.  That way the apples will not brown prematurely!

Place the apples (not the lemon water) into a pot.  Heat slowly and the moisture from the apples will steam out of the pot, leaving nothing but warm sweet applesauce.  Hubbie likes to get fancy by adding some brown sugar, allspice and cinnamon.  Basically its like apple pie fill when we make it.

Then we place it in jars.  We steamed the jars to keep the insides sealed until we're ready to eat it.  Leaving a 1/2 an inch from the top of the lid, just in case we decide to freeze the jars we aren't going to eat right away.  This is a perfect way to keep the fall taste of fresh apples all winter long, and its also a great way to make home made foods in advance for school lunches.



Delicious, nutritious, home made, low carbon foot print apple sauce!



What are you planning to make from scratch for your kids lunches? 

Maybe a better question would be, what changes are you going

to make regarding your kids lunches?

You're the apple of my eye....and heart too!

Oatmeal is one of those comfort foods.  It reminds me of my Grandma Bell, who always seemed to have a pot cooking on the stove every morning I ever stayed at her cottage.  I remember its texture and the smell of it.  The instant I start to smell my own stove-cooked oatmeal, I am transported back in time.

Lately I've been hearing a lot about oatmeal, but these days its in relation to soluble fibres.  I try to always make the quick oats as opposed to instant, mainly for tradition's sake...but also because I can control the salt and sugar content. 

I also love coming up with new variations so that the kids will eat it all up.  Noah is a fan, but Owen is still getting used to the texture. 

The label on Quaker Oats says oatmeal is a soluble oat fibre which contributes to healthy cholesterol levels.  This is one reasonably priced food to have in your pantry.  One bag, in our house, seems to last for a long time.  All I know is its great on these cold, damp mornings before you start your day.

I included my recent favorite variation.  Enjoy!

I make the oatmeal as per the directions, but just before its completely cooked...I add in some 1% milk.

During the cooking process I pull out a bag of peeled and sliced apples.  We picked these apples from Owen's nana's few apple trees.  Normally we would have gone out apple picking in the fall with the family.  The beauty of freezing apples in this format is that you can pull them out of the freezer at almost anytime for nearly instant apple crsip or pie....or in this case...apple pie oatmeal!  I add a dash of nutmeg, and a tsp of cinnamon...or if I have it, I'll add Victorian Epicure's Apple Pie Spice.  Its a gloriously fragrant mix of spices...NO SUGARS!   The final touch is the 1 tsp of vanilla.  If you want to know more about the healthy benefits of the spices I mentioned above, be sure to check out my post on carrot cake.

Of course you can add brown sugar if you decide, but I prefer to limit the amount of extra sugars we take in.  The kids get enough of it in treats.  I love to show the kids that things can taste great without the need for sugar....the look on Noah's face was priceless when I told him breakfast tastes great and it actually healthy!  (Does.....not....compute.....)

So dig into some old fashioned oatmeal...you can make it ahead and reheat as necessary.  Your heart will thank you!   Perhaps your family will too...