Peeking into the rock

We are heavily into Windfall Apple season here. My yard is normally some weeks behind the usual harvest of this region, and also I hae a Newton Pippin tree, which is a later apple. Ripeish apples drop from late August on, though they continue to get better and better into October.

Still, September is when I have to contend with a mess of windfall apples. This year the codling moth is finally a bit better, which is not to say that a majority of the windfalls don't have it, but the extent of each apple's involvement is less and the various infections that seem to follow the moth tunnels are almost nonexistant this year. Meaning most of the apples that fall and are of the normal size are usable. I've been attending more to cleanliness since I've apparently been coming out of mourning (I guess that's what's happening, anyway: though later when I have the will to do it I'll tell you about the qualification on that), and maybe the dry year is helping too, though the apple tree may have paradoxically been getting more water indirectly because of the expansion of the garden.

Anyway. What I've been doing this year with the apples:

Apple pie
Apple cobbler X2
Apple crisp
Apple walnut cookies X2 (more on that later)
Apple sauce
3 quarts of apple slices frozen for pies later in the year
Aplets (more on that later)
Apples in red cabbage
Dried apple slices (I'll probably do a bit more of this)

I'm planning on making apple butter at some point too, and I'll be cutting up apple into the rose hip jam when I make that. I'm going to freeze the rose hips first because all sources say freezing improves them.

More on the apple walnut cookies. I followed an old recipe for canned apples, just cooking mine beforehand. The first batch was kind of bland. The second batch is made from half and half whole wheat and white flour because apparently white flour tastes like paper to me now: also I added raisins. Now it is not quite unrecognizable, but it is a better cookie. Next time, spices, because it's still less flavorful than I want.

This is what I am calling "Cup and a Half Conglomerate Cookies"

1-1/2 c. tiny chopped apples in a  minimum of water with lemon juice or ascorbic acid crystals* and 1 c raisins, cooked together till the apples are quite tender and the raisins have expanded to equal the apples. Set this aside

3/4 c. butter and 3/4 c. sugar, creamed

3 eggs, mixed in smoothly

1-1/2 c. mixed flour and 1-1/2 c. oatmeal, mixed in smoothly

The apples and raisins, and 1-1/2 c. coarsely chopped walnuts, mixed into the batter

Dropped as 1-1/2" balls onto buttered paper on cookie sheets, baked at 365 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. They don't spread, so you can get a couple dozen onto a sheet. Makes about eight dozen if you don't eat much of the batter.


Aplets, well, you might recall I wanted to make Turkish Delight (Loukoum) because it's difficult to get here and I love it. Well, that's too complex for me, I decided after much research. I saw recipes for aplets this year, though, which are pretty close to loukoum and I love them too. Some recipes were for juice which is more trouble than it's worth especially with my stupid little juicer. But others were for smooth applesauce which is a little trouble (because I have no blender and I have to put the apples through a sieve if I want them smooth).

The recipe I followed made me uncomfortable on too counts: one was that it called for four!! envelopes of gelatin and the other was that it called for four!!!! cups of sugar for two cups of applesauce. I decided to follow it as is. The gelatin was not too much but oh my the sugar is, especially considering you have to coat the little buggers in confectioner's sugar when they're done...next time, three cups. These are not inedible but they are miles too sweet.

Here's the recipe I followed, except I didn't grind the walnuts because that's dumb, normal aplets have walnut chunks in them.  Also I didn't add lemon juice because I made the applesauce with ascorbic acid.  Also, this recipe makes too much for an 8X8 pan and not enough for a 9X17 pan. I ended up putting it into a non-standard pan that was a wee bit bigger than the 8X8 pan (not bigger enough, in my oipinion: the stuff was still too deep). Eliminating that extra cup of sugar might make it fit better into my pan. Another problem was that the method of dissolving the gelatine was difficult.

So next time:

2 cups ultra smooth applesauce: heat this lightly. Sprinkle 4 envelopes of gelatine slowly onto the applesauce, stirring constantly until it is all uniform. Stir 3 cups of sugar in gradually the same way. Let it simmer 15 minutes or so. Add flavorings (I used almond extract and rose water: next time, even though there's ascorbic acid in there the way I make the applesauce, I will add lemon juice and possibly lemon rind: also, maybe, cinnamon and/or allspice or nutmeg), stir as you turn off the heat, pour into buttered pan (maybe 9X9 would be better?), chill overnight.

I wanted to turn the thing out onto a cloth coffered in cornstarch but it wouldn't come out whole even after having its bottom warmed in water, so I cut it in quarters and got it out that way. Consequently the pieces are uneven, but they probably would be anyway. I made them about 1 inch by 1 inch by 3/4 inch and got about seventy of them. I was trying for more like 3/4X3/4X1, because they are so sweet. Much sweeter than "real" applets.

I have a tremendous sweet tooth, and I like to eat sweets very often, but I prefer sweets that are mildly sweet to ones that are very sweet for their type. Also I tend to prefer rustic sweets with a lot of texture and recognizable fruits and nuts in them. And here lately I'm just not drawn to chocolate at all. I don't dislike it but I never really want it.

I made another batch of peach leather, this time not as a side project to canning peaches. Yield: one big mesh orange bag of windfalls makes five trays of peach leather. Remember to line the trays with the drying mesh and the parchment. The mesh orange bag is for selling ten pounds of oranges, but peaches are much denser than oranges because of their respective peels. Connie still has too many peaches and I don't know if she wants me to make them into things. She could do peach wine, I suppose. I'm not going to. Anyway, lots and lots of them are windfalls, only really good for leather and sauce and stuff.

I racked the wine on Monday. This was eight days after putting it in secondary. It tasted, Frank said, "like Smirnoff ice." That is, it was sweet sweet, and kind of harsh tasting, but probably not very alcoholic. It was a raspberry-magenta color, and less murky than before, because it had left a pink smear on the bottom of the carboy (and the extra-wine jug, which is also fitted with an airlock and so therefore is getting almost the same experience as the carboy), but it is still opaque. I guess it must have some translucency because it looks less murky than before. It's rapidly fizzing yet. The nice lady at "Portable Potables" says we should let it get as alcoholic as we want it to be, and then kill the yeast with Campden tablets and adjust the sweetness. I like sweet wines more than I used to, but we'll see.

Emma's Jason's mother has too many Asian pears and I don't like the recipes for them I find online, but they make nice tasting juice. My too many apples are still coming online. I still havde some thinking to do. I think I may take Robyn's too many Asian pears and my too many apples and, surprise, make wine of them. Since I won't make cider. I do have another carboy so I can handle another five gallons of juice.

There are too many grapes coming along but not enough, and not consistently enough, to manage anything spectacular. I'm thinking odd bunches of raisins, maybe. No, I can't just eat them. There are too many. We will also have too manypomegranates this year and I really don't know. The pomegranate liqueur was good but we just aren't big liqueur drinkers.

Those are my fruit progress notes for September 5, 2007.

Also: I have pruned the plum tree way down. I have done almost half the work of pruning the apricot tree way down, including removing the stump of the diseased branch. I have initiated work on the apple tree, thinking that I'd really like to borrow a guy with a chainsaw because I have to remove some large stuff. The almond trees are going to be a big deal again. I'm planning a big attack on the pomegranate after the fruit is done, but I can do all that myself because the pomegranate is all small limbs except for a couple which are close to the ground. I need a new limb saw: Ted says the old one is too dull, and I don't think we can afford to have it sharpened (they have complicated teeth). Also the grape needs severe discipline, and a real arbor, not the haywired one of plastic piping and twine. I also pruned both lemons.

And the lemons need feeding.

Let's see. Canned plums, check: plum jelly, check. Chinese plum sauce, check: dried plums, check. Plum wine: in primary fermentation. Nice fellow will move to under apple tree tomorrow. I think there are enough good plums still on the tree for me to make more of the plum sauce (it's really good, though it's a color that would frighten you if you came upon it unexpectedly, or in a dark alley), or maybe that plum thing that personhead dragonet2 gave me the recipe for.

Sadly, after spending hours trying to figure it out, I do not have a name for the troubles the plum and apricot tree have. But I do have a remedy, short of euthanasia. So I have a plan, more or less, around that.

Plum madness ends just in time for apple madness to begin. Let's see: I have I think seven quart and three pint-and-a-half jars I can put apple juice into. I do not think this is a good year for me to make cider. Well, it could be. Dried apples are stupid, unlike dried plums which are cool. Apple butter, good, applesauce, better. Apple pie is wonderful. The only problem the apple tree has is worms, which I have been treating faithfully with codling moth traps to no avail. I don't think it's brown apple moth, because the moths I saw were different looking in ways I cannot remember.

Speaking of euthanasia, did I mention that the old refrigerator, which I have roundly hated for the last several years of its life, finally gave us an excuse? The fan motor gave out, or went moribund, anyway, and started making loud noises and stinking up the place with that burnt-motor smell. If your refrigerator does that and you like your refrigerator, you have it fixed. But that refrigerator had tiny cracks all through its structural plastic, and almost everything nonessential was broken: crisper drawers, the shelf that sits on them, door shelves, door handle . . . it was just hideous.

So we got a new one from Sears. We could not afford it: but we're breaking out the last bit of savings anyway to send the boy to Prague, and there's enough left over to buy the fridge. The nice fellow believes to the bottom of his soul that having black appliances is worth an extra fifty dollars, so it's black. To bore you with more details: it was the smallest non-stupid model they had -- 18.2 cubic feet (I know, those of you from countries where they use rational measuring systems are thinking, "what's next? is she going to give the energy usage in poods per fortnight?" but hey, I just live here). It was the least energy-greedy model they had. And let me tell you another effect of a Republican administration: several years ago when I first started daydreaming about replacing the refrigerator, the models that were on display at the Sears store were markedly lower in energy usage across the board than the ones available now. And they varied more. There were more sizes and there were more different options. Now most of the refrigerator models are humongous and take too much energy. One improvement is the almost-universal glass shelf instead of the annoying wire ones. They all had split shelves, which I think is a good thing. The vegetable drawers are tiny, though. I think a large head of cabbage will not fit in one. So I have retained one of the plastic bins I was using to replace the broken vegetable bins in the old refrigerator, and I've put it on a shelf and filled it with leeks, cabbage, carrots, and celery, the things that don't fit into the bins. Also went online and ordered an extra door shelf to put little jars of mustard and pickles and stuff on.

I love having a functional refrigerator and refrigerator light.

Now, if I can get the dishwasher freed from its prison, fixed, returned, and defended from groat, I will be happy.

For some reason, this was undertaken, not as a protest against the Border PAtrol, but as an outreach project for the mentally ill.

On other fronts, I have made my first apple pie and my first batch of applesauce a full minth before I usually do, and we all know why that is.

This time of year is traditionally when I fade out and fall down on maintaining the garden. The flowers are pretty much done, the first fruits are done, and traditionally I have a month to go before apples and two or three months before pomegranates. I get discouraged because the yard is so dry. But this year, possibly because of the earliness of the apples and the tantalizing not-quite-thereness of the grapes (this being the first year I've had too many coming on) and also possibly because of being underemployed but not depressed over unemployment anymore, I'm prety busy in there. I guess also because of helping Gloria in her garden which is the opposite of mine: rural, sandy, sunny, while mine is urban, clayey, and shady.

Another disheartening thing about this time of year is rose fungus. ALthough it hasn't rained for about three months and it won't rain for about two more, we get these heavy overcast mornings and afternoons and half the time a dew that will wet the ground -- a "high fog" and sometimes even a fog that nadinelet will admit is a fog(she of the Valley origins where a fog is by dog a tule fog, a pea soup fog you can't see past the length of a car in. THis means wet, cool air -- no cold, just cool to lukewarm, and fungus just loves it.

So this year I made up the famous sure-fire home remedy for rose fungus and I have pruned the roses way back and I have sprayed them with the home remedy, which is roughly this:

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 gallon unchlorinated water
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp Listerine (yes, the famous mouthwash, not mint flavour, just regular)
1 tbsp liquid soap
1 ½ tbsp baking soda
Pump sprayer (large)

I used a different brand of antibacterial mouthwash and I didn't measure.

I just did this so I don't have anything to report: but I originally heard of it from a woman who has perfect roses in a gorgeous garden around and behind the stained glass supply store where we sometime go looking for textured glass for the many eccentric little window things the nice fellow puts into the interior walls and cabinets. I have also been feeding the garden with "Elinor's VF-11," a locally-made product that all the ladies in the dentist office rave about (though I haven't seen incredible lushness yet) and I used a box of Sul-Po-Mag, which usually makes a difference.

And I have pulled a muscle from reaching up high for summer pruning and apple picking. As usual.