Apple Harvest

We went apple picking at a local farm and truly enjoyed ourselves. My husband found this lovely gem among all the apples we picked (a bushel) and presented it to me. "I must have picked this one for you." He can be so sweet.

I usually make 10 apple pies and 10 apple crisps and put them in the freezer unbaked. We bake and eat them throughout the winter. Last year we barely got through them all so I think I will only make a few of each. But I still wanted to pick a whole bushel with a plan to store the rest.

Since I have a rather large sack of potatoes in my back room (our pantry) that space is a 'no-go' for my apples. Apples and Potatoes don't get along well, you see, and I would hate to have rapidly ripening bushel. So I stashed them in my linen closet up stairs. The hideaway gets no light and there is no nearby furnace vents which keeps the spot relatively cool. We have no basement and the temperatures in our attic vary so greatly I would not trust anything to survive up there.



There are a few things to worry about with apples: Bruises and close contact with other apples. These two things can wreak havoc on an apple harvest. To combat this apples must be sorted. Any fruit with breaks in the skin, bruises or soft bits should be used for pies right away. All reasonably 'perfect' apples can be wrapped in newspaper (not the coloured paper) and placed in a container. The apples are kept from touching each other so if one does decide to decline, apples sitting around it won't degrade as well.




Apples should stay firm for a good three to four months if stored like this.

Setting the Twist

There is one important step to spinning that often gets forgotten. It's called setting the twist.



Once in a skein, yarn must be soaked in warm/hot water for a few minutes before being dried. Now you can't just wring out your wool like you would while hand washing clothes. Here are a few rules for handling wool:

Treat your wool gently.

Never pour water over your wool, just place the wool in the water.

Do not twist, or wring out wool.

And please do not put your wool in the washing machine.


To dry your wool after it's been soaking, use a towel to roll the wool in while squeezing out the access water.




You have two options when drying. You could either hang your wet skein and attached a heavy weight to the bottom to stretch the skein out. You can do this by attaching a heavy can or draping something over the bottom to pull on the yarn. Alternatively you could also just hang the skein and add no weight which would provide a different look altogether for your yarn.



I use our indoor drying rack to dry my skeins. It works well. After a bit of manipulation I have found a good way to pull my skeins down giving it a bit of stretch.

Apple Pie!

So here is the apple pie I made with our foraged apples... I came up a bit short since the apples were smaller than usual so I just pulled a few from the fridge. Apple pie is pretty easy.

The crust is 1 cup of shortening, 2 cups of flour, a dash of salt, and enough cold water to make it moist enough to roll out.

The filling is just apples, a bit of sugar, cinnamon, all spice and voila!

Now... for a bit more pizazz here's a few hints to make it memorable.

- add extras to the apple filling like coconut, walnuts, almonds. Adds some nice new flavours.

- use canape cutters to cut out small hearts, pumpkins, leaves etc from the top of the pie crust. The hole makes a great vent from steam and the cut out pieces make nice decorations on top.

- apple pies can be frozen before cooking. Just wrap in plastic wrap and tin foil and place in freezer. When ready to bake let it de-thaw for a few hours on the counter and then bake as normal. I always make a few apple pies and apple crisps at this time of year and freeze them. Nothing tastes better than fresh apple pie in January!

Enjoy apple season! One of my favourite times of year!

Foraging

The idea of foraging for food is an old one, but one that is almost frowned upon nowadays. Somehow our society has equated foraging with scavenging or dumpster diving. While pockets of people are still passing on these age-old skills a lot of people without a mentor to guide them are hesitant to start.

What plants are edible? What if I mistake a poisonous plant or berry? Some people are sure that the work they expel while hunting down food is too much, especially when a supermarket, just down the street, is filled to the rafters.

While intrigued with foraging, I am one of those who does not have a mentor and so it was one of the things on the bottom of my skills-to-learn list but I did know I wanted to learn.



The kids and I got a crash course yesterday when meeting up with friends to hike a local trail. Right at the start of the trail I spotted two trees with bright red apples on the branches. The trees were hidden by smaller trees and bushes all around. Looking from the trail you would not have noticed there were apple trees without looking up.

My daughter was sure they were "crappy apples" but I didn't think so. After our walk the kids were hungry but I didn't have anything besides water, so I joked about them climbing the apple tree for a snack. And they did! My daughter was the first one to bite in and she said they tasted so sweet!

We spent nearly an hour picking apples by any means necessary. Both of the trees were so densely covered with neighbouring plants one trunk could not be accessed. Left to their own devices the trees have grown gnarly, and their branches were high. There were thorn bushes as well but getting threw that was half the fun.



The kids climbed as far as they could, they began using sticks to nudge apples from the spots and eventually when all that were in reach were gathered they began throwing the sticks and collecting whatever fell.

We gathered enough for an apple pie, I am sure. Even though some are a bit scabby it will peel and the fruit inside is quite sweet. In the end, it was such a good day and I was so happy coming home with my backpack full of 'found' apples that I felt closer to self-sufficiency.

The Deceitful Nature of Tomatoes

Tomatoes look so unassuming on the outside. Their harvest is usually plentiful leading the harvester to image a plethora of wonderful products to make. Don't be deceived my friend, nothing is as great a disappointment as the deceitful tomato.

In order to prepare tomatoes for anything really, they must be peeled. The best way to peel a tomato is by cutting an X in the bottom and then blanching (boiling) them for 2 minutes before plunging them in cold, cold water. This process makes the skins loose and easy to peel...it also makes them slippery, slushy and that's not the half of it.



After they are peeled they must be seeded. The ideal tomato variety for canning is the Roma tomato also known as Paste Tomato. Roma tomatoes have far less seeds and juice than other varieties but still be prepared to lose half their bulk once peeled and seeded.

A large basket of tomatoes can quickly turn into barely enough to complete a recipe. I planted 24 seedlings this year and have harvested about about 25lbs. The first harvest last weekend garnered 2 freezer bags of diced tomatoes (for chili)..yup you heard me TWO!

I have another full basket here that I hope will be enough for a few jars of salsa, but I doubt it. I will need to find another source but given the massive amounts of rain received this year such a feat may be easier said than done.

Harvest Time II : Preserving your crops

Summer's bounty is all well and good but what do you do with all that sustenance once it's brought in from the elements. Scientists say that food emzymes begin to break down the minute items are detached from their mother plant. Food can decline quickly if not stored properly.



Certain foods can hold their own if conditions are right. Potatoes, rutabaga, and apples** can all 'over winter' well enough in cold storage but what to do with the rest.

I like freezing a certain amount. I preserve by canning when I can. Storing canned items takes no extra electricity to sit on a shelf, not like frozen food that needs a near constant supply of energy to stay frozen. But you can not can everything. And so freezing becomes a great advantage in our day and age.

Almost all food can be frozen but most need to be put through a process called BLANCHING, a quick boil process that stops the emzymes from progressing and subsequently spoiling food. Without blanching a certain food's texture will become... well let's just say undesirable and leave it at that.



Blanching and freezing the harvest seems to be this long hidden secret. A secret that forces everyone who is not 'in the know' to buy commercially frozen produce at astronomically high prices, never knowing how much they are being ripped off. It doesn't take much time either, and when you think about it, it saves oodles of time in mid-winter when making a soup and all you have to do is pull these frozen garden delights from the freezer all washed, sliced and ready to go.



Blanching works well for lots of foods. My favourites are carrots, corn, brocoli, cauliflower, and sometimes tomatoes.

Here's how to blanch: wash and cut your vegetables while having a pot of water coming to a boil on the stove. Once the pot reaches a rolling boil, fill it with your vegetables and start the timer. It usually takes 2 to 4 minutes depending on what you are blanching. Time varies depending on the variety of produce so make sure you check below. At the end of the allotted time, drain veggies in a strainer and then submerge in ice cold water to stop the cooking process. Once the veggies are cool to the touch, you can pull them out of the water, let them dry for a few minutes and then pack in freezer bags or storage containers. Freeze right away.

Blanched veggies are good for soups, stews, casseroles, and as steamed side dishes. And researches say that frozen veggies are so similar to their fresh state that they contain the same amount of nutrients as those found in fresh veggies. And compared to how much food needs to be altered to can it, that's a pretty good deal. They should be consumed in 1 year.

Here's a list of various food that can be frozen and their blanching times.

Asparagus: small 2 minutes/ medium 3 minutes/ large 4 minutes

Beans (Green and Wax): cut 2 to 3 minutes/ whole 3 to 4 minutes

Beans (Lima): small 2 minutes/ Large 4 minutes

Brocoli: small to medium 3 minutes/ large 4 minutes

Carrots: 2 to 3 minutes

Cauliflower: 4 minutes

Corn (Cut, whole kernel or cream style): 4 minutes

Corn on the Cob: small 7 minutes/ large 11 minutes

Parsnips: 2 minutes

Peas: 2 minutes

Rutabaga (turnip): Blanching not required

Summer Squash (Zucchini): 3 minutes best for soups

Winter Squash (Pumpkin): Bake at 350F for 40 to 60 minutes. Boil 15 to 20 minutes. Steam 30 to 60 minutes. Cool in refrigerator.

Tomato (Whole or diced): cut an X on the bottom, scald for 1 to 2 minutes because it helps to remove the peel.



** Apples and Potatoes should never be stored over winter in the same room as each other... apparently apples don't like their earthly cousin (the pomme de terre, literally translated as apple of the earth). Actually apples omit a gas as they continue to ripen which causes potatoes to spoil.

Harvest Time

Even the worst gardens have triumphs and here's mine. My carrots and tomatoes arrived with great abundance. I felt rather giddy digging out my carrots, not caring that most were smaller than my smallest finger. No matter. What ever they lacked in size they made up for in quantity. I am not sure why I was so surprised at their success. I planted parsnips last year and had a bumper crop. My soil here must be good for root vegetables.




My tomatoes also prospered, despite a bit of blight from overcrowding (my fault) and far too much rain (Mother Nature's oversight). I spent the summer on constant suspense thinking at any moment we could get word that we would have to vacate our rental house while my husband was still finishing up school. Such a turn of events would have us homeless and nearly penniless so needless to say my mind was elsewhere... what's Gaia's excuse?

Because of our external woes, I found myself lacking "umph' in a lot of projects around here. My flower beds are completely over run with weeds, and my vegetable garden did not fare much better, although anything which gave us sustenance seemed to get more attention than things that survive purely on looks (do you see any parallels here?).

But all's well that ends well. My husband graduated school two weeks ago and started work at his new job yesterday. We have been permitted to stay another year which gives us more than enough time to shop around for our homestead (yet another step in the right direction). And I now have oodles of tomatoes to make salsa.



My garden is a parallel to my life it seems. This summer started off with a future of uncertainty, about the same time that my brocoli, cauliflower and lettuce were eaten by unknown sources (without my permission). Now that everything has panned out for us off the 'homestead' it seems our homestead has been generous enough to provide a few delights as well.

Just goes to show, happiness is truly homemade.

My new pal

We adopted a cat today from the SPCA. He's a sweet guy with beautiful markings. I am so glad we stopped in to the shelter on Friday. He's fitting in rather well.

The shelter staff named him Regal and so we tried to come up with a equally royal name. Julius, Ceasar, Henry, Prince, Rex all came to mind but then it hit me. Augustus. It is August after all.

So he seems to be all settled in. Although he has been sneezing an awful lot... the shelter staff told me it's the kitty version of the common cold and should clear up on it's own. Poor guy...perhaps we should name him Sneezer Augustus instead.