First Day of Fall

The first day of fall 2010 finds me in the kitchen. It's a dreary day, drizzle with a high of only 55 degrees here. I had to turn the heat on, or face a very grumpy Thing 2. Even with the heat on, he's cold. "Put a sweatshirt on," I say, and hear a grumble in response. I wish we could have at least had a warm fall to make up for our lackluster summer.

I'm in the process of preserving as much as possible right now. I have about 60 pounds of apples to deal with at the moment. I haven't even had the time to weigh them all, and so have only been doing it as I use them.

Today I dried about eight pounds of apples. Eight pounds fills my dehydrator trays, which in turn fill one one-gallon ziploc bag once dry. I dried another eight pounds a couple of days ago, and will do another two or more batches this week. Thing 2 loves to have them in oatmeal, and prefers eating dried apples to fresh.

I peel, core and slice them on my contraption that's used for such purposes. It takes under an hour to fill the trays, and another six hours before they're dry. Then, into a ziploc they go, as much air squeezed out as possible, and they stay in pretty good shape for months in the pantry.

I was going to order Clear Jel from Amazon, but they were sold out already, and I have no clue where to find it around here. I wish I had some to can apple pie filling. If anyone in the Seattle area knows of a place that carries it, let me know! I'm thinking applesauce this weekend at any rate.