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Ingredients

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Ingredients

Instructions

Ingredients

Instructions

Print Italian Croutons

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Instructions

EVOO

Cut the top of the head off to expose the garlic cloves.  Drizzle oil over the head, rap in foil and bake at 350F for 1 hour.  Use immediately or store in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Not sure what to do with it?  Add to mashed [...]]]> 1 full head of garlic

EVOO

Cut the top of the head off to expose the garlic cloves.  Drizzle oil over the head, rap in foil and bake at 350F for 1 hour.  Use immediately or store in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Not sure what to do with it?  Add to mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, pasta, or toast.  Make garlic butter by combining 1tb butter with 3 cloves of garlic and slather on your toast.  You can freeze garlic butter.  You can also freeze roasted garlic, 2-3 cloves per cube in an ice cube tray works ell.  Freeze until solid, then remove to a freezer bag.

Apples are one of those versatile fruits that can be preserved in so many ways.  We drive an hour south to pick up bushels and bushels of apples every fall, then we come home and spend about a week putting them up.  Here is how we do it:

Freezing:

                I don’t normally [...]]]> Preserving Apples

Apples are one of those versatile fruits that can be preserved in so many ways.  We drive an hour south to pick up bushels and bushels of apples every fall, then we come home and spend about a week putting them up.  Here is how we do it:

Freezing:

                I don’t normally freeze a lot of fruits, in fact, apples are probably the only fruit I do freeze a bit.  I peel, core, and slice the apples into 8ths, dip them in water mixed with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, then lay them in a single layer on a cookie tray.  I freeze them until they’re solid, then package into Ziplock bags.  We use these apples in oatmeal.  My kids loooove frozen fruit in their oatmeal.  I try to get about 4-6 ziplock bags to last us the year – while we eat oatmeal almost daily, we vary the add ins to keep things interesting.  They love snacking on frozen apples too.

We don’t normally buy apples during the rest of the year because they aren’t in season and as a result cost more or are not as fresh.  So, when we buy apples in the fall, they are meant to fill all of our apple needs for a year.

Dehydrating

Here is where things get busy.  We dry apples into leathers, wedges, slices, and chips.  You can choose to peel them or not, we prefer to have them peeled.  Use a manual peeler where you stick the apple on a holder and turn the handle to turn the apple which makes it peel pretty quickly.  My kids love to peel the apples, and dip them into the water/lemon juice (to preserve color) and lay them on the dehydrator trays all nice and pretty.  I can’t tell you what the ‘proper’ ratio of lemon juice and water is -  fill up a big stainless steel bowl with water and give it a healthy squeeze or two of lemon juice, which I buy in bulk from the bulk food store.  We re-use the water/lemon juice till our day of dehydrating is done.  If you can set the temperature on your dehydrator, set it for 135F.

• Wedges: I slice them using my apple corer/slicer which cuts them into 8 pieces.  I then slice them in half again if necessary so the pieces aren’t any wider than about ¼- ½ inch at the widest point. I dip them in lemon juice and water, then lay them on the dehydrating trays.  Drying apple slices in this way takes a bit longer than plain chips because there is a wide edge that takes a while to dry.   But – they are fantastic as a snack, cut up into granola or oatmeal, added into yogurt, or rehydrated and made into apple pie.
• Slices and chips:  After peeling and coring the apples, I slice them using my food processor.  I use the 2mm blade for chips and 4mm blades for slices.  Once sliced, I dip them in water and lemon juice, then we lay them on the trays to dry.  The chips are meant simply as a snack, though my kids prefer the wedges to snack on over chips now, so we won’t be doing quite as many chips next year.  The slices, however, are a bit thicker and can be used in other cooking applications (or snacking too).   We love a side dish with sweet potato slices and apple slices baked with honey and cinnamon, so I make the slices primarily for this meal J  It’s so yummy.
• Apple Leather:  You can make apple leather out of cooked applesauce, or raw pureed apples.  I did both last year and enjoy them both.  You may wish to add some lemon juice right to the raw puree to preserve coloring, but that isn’t necessary for applesauce that has already been cooked.  If I am making cooked applesauce first I just quarter my apples, place them in a bit of water on the stove and cook until soft.  Then I place them in my KitchenAid with the foodmill/sieve attachment and run the apples through.  This makes quick work of peeling and removing seeds, and also purees my apples for me too.  Then I lay them apple sauce on dehydrator trays lined with plastic wrap (because I haven’t purchased the tray liners for leathers yet) and dry them.  I keep the outer edge a bit thicker than the center because food is dried from the edges in, so it keeps the edges from becoming brittle before the center is dry.  If you choose to make raw apple leather, you’ll need to peel and core the apples, then I use my food processor to turn them into a puree and put them on plastic wrapped dehydrator trays.

Canning

I do enjoy canning apple wedges and apple pie.  I love the simplicity of opening up a jar of apple pie filling to fill pie crusts, and that is how I do my holiday pies.  I also keep some quarts on hand to make an easy pie to give to others as a part of a dinner or to bring to a potluck, or to use as filling for apple crisp.  Canned apple wedges are used around here for apple oven pancakes and other cooking applications that use apple wedges.  Another thing we can a lot of is apple sauce.

Canning apple wedges and applesauce is easy – you use a waterbath canner so there is no pressure canning involved.  Prepare your apples in the way you wish, fill clean, hot mason jars leaving ½ inch headspace, fasten lid and ring and process in a boiling waterbath canner for 20 minutes (pints and quarts).  Apple pie filling may be differently timed depending on your recipe.

This year I may look into white sugar-free options for jams and jellies so my kids can enjoy apple jelly on their toast.  They react horribly to white sugar so we try to avoid it as much as possible.

Print Honey-Almond Chicken

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