Seasonal Living: Finishing the pigs

Apple snack!

A lot of what I try to incorporate into my life can be described as "seasonal living" and by that I mean that I try to take advantage of what's available each season not only from a local food perspective but from a cultural calendar as well. Heading into mid fall is a time of wrapping up production of fruit trees for the year and, for many people, it means processing and finishing up animals for slaughter.

This year I've tried to couple the two. I have friends (Eve and Nick) who live in Ellensburg and used to be my next door neighbors in Seattle. They are one of the reasons I moved out to the area because they planted the seed in my head of living on this side of the mountains when they moved to Cle Elum in 2016. Now that they live in Ellensburg, they have a mini farm complete with chickens, goats, a steer and four pigs (Idaho Pastures). 

Apples and pumpkins

I don't remember how we got on the topic of picking up all of our downed apples (both from my two trees and Dan's) and the neighbor's pears to finish their pigs, but they've made a number of trips to Roslyn to collect fallen apples and pears and, most recently, I saved all the pumpkin guts and pumpkins from our Halloween carvings. I don't have composting set up yet and it kills me to throw any of this in the garbage, so it's been a great exchange. The pigs are more than happy to eat the apples and pumpkins and the yard gets cleared of ankle snapping apples. It's a huge win! 

Doe eating apples

The only critters unhappy about the situation are the deer who have made it a habit of routinely (like 4 times a days), jumping the fence into my yard to eat fallen apples. Friday night they jumped the fence while we were sitting by the fire, playing music and making a considerable amount of noise. It was a little unnerving, but they just stood there and stared at us for a few minutes before jumping back over the fence and going elsewhere. At least the black bears aren't as brazen.

My friends will probably make one more trip to clear the ground at Dan's place and mine before the pigs are processed. They are not sure if they will be raising pigs again next year but, if they do, I hope we can help by supplying them with more apples and any other extra garden produce we can't eat or preserve. In the meantime, the local deer, bear and elk populations will help with clearing the rest of the yard.

It's apple season!

Pic courtesy of 2CookinMamas

I have two huge apple trees on my new property here in Roslyn, WA. One that bears sweet, eating apples and one that bears more tart, baking apples. In spite of cutting the trees down considerably before I moved in (so I could comfortably walk around the yard without whacking my brains out), they are still very prolific producers of apples.

So, what have I been doing with all those apples (besides just eating them) since I moved in at the beginning of October? Not enough to keep up!!

Apples in the dehydrator

1. Dehydrating - The first batch that went into the dehydrator was from the tart tree. I did toss the apple slices with a little sugar and a lot of cinnamon. Those dried apples lasted about a week due to my 17-year-old's voracious appetite, so today I'm doing round two. This time I'm drying a mix of the sweet variety and the tart ones as well. I also threw in some pears while I have it running.

2. Roasting - I've been roasting the tart apples alongside onions, sweet potatoes, carrots and a variety of meats like chicken and beer soaked brats (Oktoberfest!). I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of roasted apples, but I'm sure I'll keep trying. I think next time I'll add them later in the roasting time so they are not as squishy.

3. Canning - Next week I'll be making and canning apple butter in the slow cooker. I haven't done it yet because I haven't yet had the gumption to peel, core and cut 6+ pounds of apples.

4. Baking - In an effort to use up some apples, I embarked on making an apple cake last week. It didn't use up as many apples as I would have liked, but it was very good nonetheless! I'm planning on baking a Dutch Apple Pie this Friday, which I'm looking forward to!

Apples!

5. Squeezing - Okay, I know cider pressing isn't like orange juicing, but we're going to have a big cider pressing party here in the new week or two. We're not big into drinking apple juice or cider, but I am planning on making apple pie moonshine with the results of the cider pressing. I'll be reporting on the success of that project. Word on the street is that it's fairly potent stuff.

6. Finishing of the hogs - My friends (and ex-next-door-neighbors from Seattle) now own a small farm in Ellensburg. Among their many animals are four pigs that they are finishing on apples and other fruits. They've been making a weekly trip to come and grab all the dropped fruit from my yard, my next door neighbor and my boyfriend's apple trees. In exchange, I've been getting eggs from their chickens. There seems to be an imbalance in this deal, but I'm not going to point it out!

What's your favorite way to use apples?

What to do with all those apples

Apple season is upon us and last night I went to a course and tasting on Washington apples at The Dahlia Lounge (thanks to my foodie brother, Darryl).

So, while my mind is wrapped around apples, let's discuss some of the fantabulous things you can do with all dem apples. Don't be shy - make this year the one where you buy a bushel or two.

Of course, there's the myriad ways of cooking and baking with apples, but I'm assuming you can eat only so many apple pastries at once so I'm going to focus on throwing out some ideas of things to do with apples that you can store and enjoy throughout the year.

Drinks
Well, first off there's the beverage selections. You can press your own apples and make apple juice or apple cider. You can home pasteurize these juices by boiling and then freezing the juice to make sure that nothing unwanted grows in your liquids. If you are real excited, you can make your own hard apple cider. You can even make your own apple cider vinegar if you let your hard cider ferment until it becomes vinegar.

Don't forget! You can boil down the juice or cider to make an apple syrup which can come in handy for making apple-flavored cocktails among other things.

Canning jams, jellies and whatnots
Next up are easy ways of preserving the apple bounty by using your trusty canner. You can make apple jelly, caramel apple jam, applesauce, apple chutney and apple pie filling.

Don't forget! You can make your own pectin from apples for use in your other canning projects.

Drying and freezing
A great, fast and tasty way of preserving loads of apples is by dehydrating them. You can dry them with or without the skins on, just know that it takes longer to dry them if you leave them on. By doing this at home you avoid the sulfur-laden ones from the store.

It's easy to freeze apples. You basically just slice them up, toss them with ascorbic acid and freeze. Another thing I like to do is prepare apple pie filling and freeze until ready to use. You can also freeze the pie filling (inside a large freezer bag) in a pie plate if you intend on going straight from the freezer to the oven.

Storing them straight up
If you are lucky enough to have a cellar or some sort of cold storage, you can store your apples until you are ready to eat them. Thick skinned apples are better at storing than others, just make sure they aren't bruised otherwise they'll all ripen faster. It's the old "one bad apple" adage.

Downed apples
If you don't know what to do with all those windfall apples that get blown off your trees (or your neighbor's), check out this article from Mother Earth News, What to Do with Windfall Apples.

I hope this has given you enough ideas of what to do with your apples. What's your favorite method to store or preserve them?

Saucy apples

I spent some time last night using up the rest of the apples given to us from a neighbor's tree, supplemented by the super low priced local apples that I got at the store.

With these apples I decided to make applesauce, even though I generally don't like it and only Emma will sometimes eat it.

[Emma, by the way, is not a chicken and I have no intentions of eating her.]

I'm sorry to say that I have never eaten homemade applesauce and Oh. My. God. is it a totally different animal from the store-bought kind. Even the organic store-brand applesauce isn't very good. They all have some weird metallicy flavor to them I can't stand.

The homemade applesauce, on the other hand, is in an entirely different food group. I did leave it a tad chunky so it's more reminiscent of apple pie rather than pulverized, rotting downed apples. Did I mention that I don't like store-bought applesauce?

Anyway, if you have a hankering for making it yourself, I recommend this recipe from Julia Child that was recently featured in our local paper, along with their recommendations for the types of apples that go well in applesauce.