Apple Fritters

We went to The Hollow this afternoon.  It's a pretty cool pumpkin patch.  We didn't pick pumpkins 'cause the garden gave us five this year.  Mostly, the kid played in the corn bin and on the haystack.  While we were there we had apple fritters for a snack.  They were good, but it was $2 for three rings. That makes the cheapskate in me go nuts, especially as we have a fridge full of apples.  It dawned on both of us that we could make fritters ourselves.

Funny, but a Google search for apple fritter brings up the Lafayette Apple Festival on the first page.  Lafayette has a monster apple festival every year on Columbus weekend.  It is wonderful, but completely insane.  Their fritters are to die for.  There are lines of 200+ people waiting for fritters.  The line moves!  They are amazing.

Anyway, this is the recipe we went with:  All Recipes Apple Fritters.  It uses four apples, but it made a ton of fritters.  They were very tasty.  

Update: Day 1 of Apple Abuse

 Not much change yet.  Bottoms felt slimy, so I laid them on their side.

Dried Apple Heads

Halloween is coming.  The kid likes to decorate for holidays.  The gaudier the better.  Add to that the fact that opening our fridge remains perilous.  You may be buried alive in an avalanche of apples.  

I decided that we could make dried apple heads.  If you want to make them for Halloween too, you need to start now.  It's okay.  You can do this.  It only takes about 30 min. 

You need: apples, 3/4 cup lemon juice, 1 tsp salt, and a knife.  Whole cloves and long grain rice are optional. 

Peel the apples.  Dip then in the salt-lemon juice solution.  Use the knife to carve out some facial features.  Press in the cloves for eyes and rice for teeth.   Leave them in a warm, dry place with good ventilation for a week or two. 

That's it!  If you don't believe me, Google it.  You can read a dozen tutorials, but it really is not that complicated. 

I'll show you how they turn out in a week or so.

Apple Brown Betty

It has been cold and raining for days.  Today was finally sunny with that deep blue Autumn sky.  As I got out of work, the clouds rolled in.  Figures.  I need something to blog about, and I want comfort food. 

I had to make it.  The name intrigued me.  It sounds like such a homey dish.  

I went with The Pioneer Woman's recipe.  Holy Cow, does she have a website!  She also has a simple recipe that did not really mess up the kitchen.  Bonus. 

We decided not to peel the apples.  I also cut the butter down to half a cup.  It did not start to scent the house till the end, probably because the lid held it in.  It does smell good.


It tastes good too.  Simple and very good.  The apples are cooked but not at all mushy.  Look at it when it came out of the oven and then a few minutes later.  It shrunk!


The other good news is that we are down to two full refrigerator drawers of apples.  The end is in sight.

Asian Pears

If you see this pear in your travels, buy it.  We saw them at the Farmers Market this weekend and bought three of them.  They are gone. 

They have the consistency of an apple, but the flavor of a very nice pear.  They also held up very well when we sliced them and packed them for lunches.  

Now back you to your regularly scheduled programming of many, many apple recipes...

Crockpot Apple Sauce

Hey Maggie!  We finally made crock pot applesauce.  We have no more apples in a laundry basket in the kitchen!  This is the recipe I went with: Crock Pot Applesauce.  We modified it up to 16 apples, cause that's how many fit in the big crock pot. 

I'm used to apple sauce recipes where you cut the apples in quarters and cook them till they are soft.  Then run them through a food mill.  With this you use one of the peeler-slicer-core gadgets, toss in the crock pot on low for 8-10 hours, and in the morning you wake up to applesauce.

It tastes pretty good.  It is darker than the stuff I make the traditional way.  That could be the brown sugar I added or the long cooking time allowing oxidization.

It made just over 2 quarts.  We froze them.

Yes, we still have applesauce in jars...

Remember the purple fabric from the swap?

I had some pink fabric left over from kiddo's pillow case.  And, as you will recall, Laura sent me some very pretty fat quarters.  I decided that Sweet Pea could have a second pillowcase and we could have a set too.  

Step 1: Fabric shopping!  We went to Calico Gals.  I love shops like this and I really want them to do well.  I did not want to spend $36 to be able to make 3 pillow cases.  Oh well.  I did not even look at fabric price.  I bought what I liked.  She liked this really fun pig print.

Step 2. Cutting.  Discovered that my old rotary cutter is pretty dull.  Tearing along the grain works really well and is faster.

Step 3. Piecing.  Laura sent me fat quarters, and I needed fabric that was 43" wide.  To make the seems disappear, I mitered them.

Step 4: Sew, sew, sew!  Fought a bit with the machine tension before I realized that the bobbin was improperly threaded...

Here they are on our bed.  The quilt is my Autumn Trip Around the World.  I love this quilt and every year it makes it onto the bed sometime in late September.  In 2003, this quilt won Best in Show at the Oswego County Fair.  I think it needed it's own special pillow cases.

Thanks Laura for the fabric and inspiration!

Dried Apples

We still have apples in a laundry basket.  I decided to try drying as an alternative form of preservation.  I don't have a dehydrator, so we used the oven.  Oven drying is a very energy inefficient way of drying, but it is cheaper than purchasing a dehydrator that I may not use.  I figure that if we use the apples, then maybe a dehydrator will be worth it.  But having never had or bought dried apples before, we will see how it goes.  

We sliced up 12 apples, then dipped them into a water-lemon juice solution.  They dried in the oven on warm  for about 7 hours.  I actually wound up turning the oven off, closing it and letting them continue to dry overnight. 

Twelve apples filled all four drying racks.  But when done, they went into a gallon freezer bag with lots of room to spare.  The kid says that they are good.  I'm going to try a second batch with sugar and cinnamon.