2nd Helping of Digital Dish

Tomatilla! would like to hear from food bloggers who are interested in being included in the 2nd helping of Digital Dish, the first print compilation of the best writing from food blogs. If you've got a food blog and would like to participate, hop on over to Tomatilla! and let him know.

Poor Man's Gyro and Sauce

I used to work in Alameda and the closest deli was a Greek one. Aside from awesome sandwiches and delicious salads of various kinds, they also had gyros. They'd slice that meat off the turning hunk of meat, top it with some tomatoes and onions, and ladle a bit of yogurt sauce on it and man oh man! That was 15 years ago and I can still almost taste them!

Then last year at our county fair out here in Pleasanton I saw a gyro stand. Now THAT's fair food! So I got one for lunch. The girls were dubious until they took a bite of mine. Then they went and stood in line for their own. And this year there was no discussion about lunch. We all knew what we wanted.

I got this recipe from a cooking list I'm on that is focused on freezer cooking. This recipe had nothing to do with freezer cooking but sounded great so I tried it tonight. I really didn't think it would taste much like the traditional gyros but figured I'd give it a try. I did it with just ground beef but the original recipe called for 1/2 ground lamb and 1/2 ground beef.

The spices are great! The garlic and oregano in the ground beef are the key. I might even do more garlic next time. The lady who posted the recipe said she sometimes does 6 cloves to a head in the sauce. I halved the sauce and still had leftovers (but no leftover meat!). Perhaps with grownups who are more sauce hungry the ratio of meat to sauce would be better. Either way, this was really good.

Sauce:
1 cup plain yogurt, drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cucumber, grated and drained or squeezed dry
1 tsp vinegar

Mix everything together. You could, and perhaps should, do this ahead of time.

Meat:
1 pound ground beef (or 1/2 ground lamb and 1/2 ground beef)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 egg
1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Mix together, then form into small patties and fry in a bit of olive oil until cooked through.

Serve with:

pita bread
chopped tomatoes
sliced onions
yogurt and cucumber sauce (above)

Repeated Menu: Worcestershire Shrimp and Coconut Rice

I think I've actually blogged about both of these before... Ah, the sign of old age for a blog. Do I repost the recipes or just include links? I think I'll repost them and save you a few clicks. These are from Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Cooks Dinner

Shrimp, I'm discovering, is (are?) one of those great weeknight menu items. They cook up fast. They can stay in the freezer until you need them. And they're a treat, at least in my household. This is NOT CheapCooking in a monetary sense; but it makes a nice weeknight meal in a short time.

2 pounds shrimp
1/4 cup butter
2 Tbs (or more!) Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs or more lemon juice or so (1 lemon basically)

How much simpler can you get?! Heat the butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the shrimp and Worcestershire sauce. If the shrimp are raw, cook until done. If the shrimp are already cooked, as mine were tonight, just heat through a few minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and serve!

My eldest wanted this over pasta because the last time we had shrimp I served it/them with pasta. But tonight, I cooked up the coconut rice from the same book (although there is a mistake in the ratio of liquid to rice!). I remember this early blog entry in particular because it was one of my first that got a comment and I was thrilled! (And it was a positive comment!) But I just and went and looked for the comment and realized it was from before Blogger supported comments, so it's gone, alas. It was from someone from the islands (Jamaica if memory serves) who said they made this all the time!

I always mark variations I've done in my cookbooks so had noted the incorrect proportions the first time. Saved me some thinking time tonight.

So here's what I did tonight...

1 15 ounce can of kidney beans (undrained)
1 cup rice
1 15 ounce can of coconut milk
1/4 cup or so of water
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the kidney beans in a saucepan over high, stirring, until most of the liquid has evaporated. I left at least 1/4 cup in there because I was in a hurry to get the rice cooking. Add the coconut milk and rice and water (basically at a 2:1 ratio, but the cans keep shrinking!). Bring to a boil, stir, then cover, and lower to a simmer for 20-25 minutes. Add the salt and pepper now or at the table.

The combination of the shrimp and this rice is just perfect to me. I pour some extra shrimp "sauce" over the rice, put some fresh ground pepper on it, and could eat way more than I should!

Real Fried Chicken

I don't DO fried chicken very often. I do oven fried chicken, baked chicken, sauteed chicken, barbecued chicken, and who knows how many other variations. But fried? Yet, that was the eldest's request for a Sunday night dinner. And I do try to accommodate requests for specific dishes. Of course, given my penchant for experimentation, they've learned to be specific if they want specific!

I started with The Perfect Recipe by Pam Anderson but immediately had to adapt. I didn't have buttermilk and didn't think my powdered baking substitute would work for fried chicken. I have made tandoori chicken before, soaked in yogurt, that came out great, so decided the tanginess of the yogurt could substitute for the buttermilk. It did great! This was good fried chicken!

Soak your bone-in chicken pieces in:

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk

Soak for an hour on up to a day, depending on your schedule. I did about 2 hours.

In a paper bag (if you like to shake) or a flat pie pan or other dish, mix up:

2 cups flour
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Shake or dredge the chicken.

I had to use two skillets, both large, to fit in one whole chicken cut into pieces. I cut into the standard wings, legs, thighs, breasts and then cut the breasts in half, so basically 10 pieces.

The recipe called for 3-4 cups of vegetable shortening, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So I used about half that, probably less than 2 cups, split between the two pans. I didn't quite reach the recommended 1/2" recommended depth though.

I heated the shortening, dredged the chicken, and fried it. Here, I've seen differing advice. Pam Anderson says to fry it covered for 5 minutes, turn, cover, and fry another 5 minutes, then cover and cook another 10-12 minutes. I had it uncovered while browning, then covered it the latter 10-15 minutes. I had less fat than called for and the first time I sliced into a piece it was just a tad more pink than my comfort level. This could be due to my adversion to creating a messy stove while I cook, since I'm also the dishwasher! Perhaps I didn't have the heat high enough? Although, had I covered the pans, that would have lessened the mess. But every other friend chicken recipe I've done has had you brown the chicken uncovered and I guess I wasn't that ready to break with tradition. Maybe next time...

This was really good, despite my not following the directions. ;) And I did make pan gravy to go with the mashed potatoes. When I cut up the chicken, I cut up the neck and back and set them aside. Normally I'd throw it my freezer bag of stock parts but thought I'd give her idea a whirl of making a quick stock now to use for the gravy.

Basically, cut the chicken parts in 2" pieces. Brown them with a chopped onion for 5 minutes over medium high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook another 20 minutes. Add a quart of water (for 1 chicken neck and back), lower the heat, and cook another 20 minutes at least, leaving the liquid just simmering.

For gravy:

3 Tbs flour
3 Tbs fat from cooking the chicken
1 1/2 cups chicken broth *

* use part milk if you want a cream gravy

Heat the fat and add the flour and cook over medium high heat, stirring almost non-stop to keep it mixed for 2 to 3 minutes. A wire whisk or a flat wooden spoon works well fro this. Slowly add the broth, bring to a simmer, and cook a few minutes until thickened. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over mashed potatoes with some greens on the side. Mmmmmm!

Swordfish Kebabs

My kids asked for fish this week. I've mentioned that I'm not a huge fish fan personally, yet somehow despite this (or because of this?!) I've got kids who love fish! They pretty much like it all, at least all they've had so far. I sometimes complicate it a bit, when they'd really prefer it much simpler. But I hit on something tonight that we all liked. The only problem was I'd only bought 3/4 pound of this frozen swordfish for the 3 of us. Luckily, I'd had a big lunch because the two of them could easily have eaten it all!

The fish was flash frozen and vacuum packed. I thawed it in the frig and then in a sink of cold water, still vacuum packed. I cut it up into roughly 1 inch cubes and marinated it, then skewered it with some fresh red pepper and barbecued it. It really was quite good--and this from a non-fish person!

The inspiration from this marinade came from a Cooking Light 2003 collection. They called for a few ingredients I didn't have around, like orange juice and orange zest. I just added a bit more lemon juice and olive oil so there'd be enough liquid. I didn't have any lemon rind either, which was also in the original recipe. So add those in if you have them. When my orange tree has ripe oranges, I'll definitely add the orange in. And normally I'm using lemons off my own tree but I have no ripe lemons right now and I'm suffering. I had to actually BUY lemon juice today at the grocery store. I normally have some in the freezer from my own trees but when my refrigerator broke I had to throw out everything. I'm still suffering from stuff I freeze like that (lemon juice, lemon zest, chicken broth in small portions, peppers, onions) that is suddenly not there when I count on it.

Here's what I did. If you have lemon zest, orange juice, and orange juice by all means add them! Also, I would have readily added green pepper, green onions, white onions or other vegetables had I been cooking for adults.

2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
2 Tbs lemon juice
2-3 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp honey
1 tsp fresh ginger (I actually used that stuff in a tube)
1/4 tsp salt
a dash of pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 pound swordfish, cut in 1" cubes
1 red pepper, cut in 1" pieces

Mix up everything but the fish and vegetables. Marinate the fish cubes in it in a shallow dish or plastic bag for about 30 minutes to an hour. Thread the fish and vegetables on a skewer and barbecue for about 8 minutes total, turning once or twice.

Cheap and Easy Meat Sauce and Pasta

We had another family over for dinner this weekend and I decided to make just an easy meat sauce for dinner rather than cooking anything too fancy. I got the sauce started about an hour before they arrived, made up a salad, and got some garlic bread ready to pop under the broiler. This left me plenty of time to sit and visit with my friends, left everyone well-fed and content at the table, and was easy to clean up besides!

2 pounds ground beef
1 onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 can (6 oz?) tomato paste
1 cup red wine
1 cup water
a handful of fresh basil, chopped
a sprig of fresh oregano, chopped
another handful of fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbs sugar

Brown the ground beef in a large deep skillet and drain off most of the fat. Add the onion and garlic it and cook gently until softened. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer an hour or two. Add more water or wine or both if it gets too dry while you're cooking.

Leftovers taste great the next day and it freezes well, too, if you'd rather not eat the same thing twice in one week.

Substitute dry herbs for fresh if you need to. I personally dislike that combination herbs labeled "Italian seasoning" and prefer to just create my own combination. They always taste too strongly of something I dislike which I can never quite put my finger on.

Future Cooking: Plant Your Garlic Now

Where I live, in the San Francisco area, it's time to plant your garlic! I have been remiss the last couple of years and did not, alas, grow my own garlic which meant I had to actually go BUY garlic to plant! I went with a semi-local organic farm, Pleasant Valley. I'm sure I bought too much, because I really wanted to grow two different kinds just to compare.

The timing is good. My yellow squash has given up the ghost. And my pumpkins are done. I'll rip those out this weekend, work in some fresh compost, and get my garlic going. Come late June or July, it will be ready.

Oh, I did start a gardening blog as well, which will encompass more than just food gardening, although that's my favorite part. I'm using Blogger, which doesn't have categories, and I'm too lazy to switch tools. So a new blog seemed the answer.

Meat Pies or Cornish Pasties

I don't claim to be an expert on pasties or anything else. In our house we call these Meat Pies. In the British cookbook I got the basic recipe from they're called Cornish Pasties. It's a great way to stretch a piece of beef.

You can make these using regular pie crust dough or the more traditional pastry, which has half lard and half butter, a bit of sugar, and an egg yolk added. That's more similar to what I do for a quiche. I've done both, just depending on what I have on hand.

I almost always end up with leftover meat and potatoes and vegetables if I follow my recipe exactly. I cannot figure out how they squeeze all that filling into that little bit of pie crust! Tonight, I made one a half times the pie crust called for (basically the same as 3 pie crusts) and it worked out well. Other times, if I don't feel like rolling out all the dough, I just bake the extra filling in a small dish along with the meat pies.

I don't measure much with this recipe, except when making the pie dough. I use "about one steak", whatever I have around to use up. It's probably about 3/4 of a pound typically but a little less or more won't matter much. And obviously you could fill these with quite a variety of stuff. I just tend to make them when I have a lone piece of beef sitting around.

3/4 pound of beef (I've used a variety: top round, bottom round, tri tip)
1 onion, diced
2 carrots diced
1 potato or turnip, peeled and diced
salt and pepper to taste

1 egg and 1 Tbs of water, mixed together

Make your pastry dough or pie crust and chill it.

Chop the meat, onion, carrot, and potato or turnip. Toss together in a bowl and season with the salt and pepper.

Roll out the dough until it's about 1/4" or less thick. I tend to like them thinner, but if you're not good at rolling out the dough don't worry about it. It will taste great no matter what!

Use a bowl or plate to cut circles out of the dough, depending on how many pies you want. For me, this turns out 8 medium pies. The original recipe called this out as 4 larger pies.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Put a portion of the meat mixture into the middle of a circle of dough. Brush the edges with the beaten egg then bring together at the top of the pie and pinch the edges together to form an oval shaped pie with the seam across the top. Cut a couple of slits in each to let the steam escape. Place the pies on a cookie sheet. When you're all done rolling, filling, and sealing the pies up, use the rest of the egg ix to brush across the top.

Bake at 400 for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350 and bake another 45 minutes.

These make a great dinner and can easily be packed for lunches. I freeze the leftovers so we can just pull one out for a lunch.

Apple Custard Pie

I wanted to make an apple pie tonight but didn't feel like anything as heavy as two crusts. Yet, I didn't want to just make a crisp or cobbler either. I thumbed through a few apple pie recipes, having some vague memory of a one crust pie I'd seen with some sort of custard. I saw one for a ricotta apple pie, but opted for an apple custard pie I saw in Better Homes & Garden New Cookbook, one of my old standbys.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

I made the crust up in my food processor, although I often mix a pie crust up in my stand mixer. This is a fairly standard recipe for one crust I think:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
4-5 Tbs cold water

For detailed instructions or a low-fat pie crust, see my write up here for pie crust.

In this case, roll out the pie crust and lay it in a 9" pie pan. Peel, core, and slice enough apples to fill the crust and mound over a bit, probably 6-8 apples depending on their size. The apples will shrink as they cook down, so make them mounded a bit over the crust.

In a small bowl, mix together:

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs flour

Then add:

1/4 cup light cream

Mix well and pour over the apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover the pie loosely with a piece of aluminum foil and bake for an hour. Take the foil off and bake another 15 minutes or so, until the apples are soft when you poke them with a fork.

This was really good. The custard-like stuff with the apples is fairly light, certainly lighter than a second crust would be. Definitely a repeat!

Pork Roast: Cheater Chili Verde

I had a pork roast in the freezer that I defrosted because I'm trying to empty this old inefficient freezer I have in the garage. I knew it was inefficient when I got it but I was tempted by "free" (in that the freezer itself was free). I definitely saw the PG&E bill go up but I've been enjoying have the extra space. In a perfect world, what I'd really like is a second refrigerator/freezer combo in the garage. I run out of frig space as often as I run out of freezer space--and if the kids could skate in and grab a cold drink rather than having to come in the house all the better! But a new efficient one is not in the budget at the moment and this old inefficient one is no longer in the budget either, especially with the predicted 70% increase in energy costs!

So I had pulled out the last of the "big meats" in there to cook. (Anyone want a free inefficient freezer?) The day was filled with chores and errands so I thought a crockpot recipe would be good. A few different ones caught my eye. I ended up deciding to go with one that had basically a cup of Worcestershire sauce added to the roast and then a cup of brown sugar pressed onto the roast. Recipes with Worcestershire sauce always catch my eye. (See Worcestershire Chicken, Worcestershire Shrimp, and my new favorite meatloaf.)

These new crockpots cook too hot and you cannot trust the old recipes. I kept an eye on it and periodically lifted the lid to let some heat escape--a definite no-no on the old ones but almost a necessity on this new one, which tends to spit liquids out it gets so hot.

Normally the slow cooker provides an aroma that increases my appetite. We had a big lunch today, though, at In and Out Burger, and I was still not hungry by the time I needed to figure out the rest of the meal. Somehow, big slices of meat just wasn't doing it for me. I pulled the roast out of the crockpot and picked out the bones. I was ready to figure out some lighter dinner, thinking fried rice when I thought about chili verde. I could hardly repeat my earlier chili verde experience, which required raw meat and a bit more time. But I decided to throw some of the cooked meat back in with some green salsa and garlic salt and water and let it simmer a bit. I was worried that the Worcestershire/brown sugar combo would be too sweet, but in fact it started smelling awfully good as the meat simmered in the green salsa.

I heated up a can of refried beans and grated some Cheddar cheese. I heated up some flour tortillas in my microwave thingy that does such a great job.

Onto each tortilla, I spread some beans, topped them with a bit of cheese, put some cheater chili verde on it, then topped with some sour cream and chopped tomatoes.

Mmmmmm. The girls were both thrilled with dinner and I even ate a bit, minus the tortillas, because it smelled so good.

Welsh Rarebit / Rabbit and Raw Vegetables

Here's a quick easy dinner. Welsh rarebit is sometimes called Welsh rabbit. I've read a variety of explanations about the name and frankly I don't care too much except in the ways of idle curiosity. It's a "hard" cheese sauce, with beer, over toast. Simple. Comfy. Easy.

The cheese sauce is one of those reasons you want to learn how to make a white sauce. In this case you add cheese, some beer, Worcestershire, and cayenne.

Again, this is already on the "main" cooking site so I'll just send you over there for the recipe. Or look it up in one of your old cookbooks. It's probably there.

I generally serve this with a light soup or just cut up raw vegetables. Tonight it was the raw vegetables, with some sliced red pepper and some raw pea pods. Gotta have some color with the pretty much beige cheese sauce!

Cheeseburger Soup and Biscuits

Ah, soup night . Soup night is a staple around here come winter but the weather is at that unpredictable state. Still, youngest requested one of our favorite hearty soups, which is a variation of a hamburger soup you might see in many old community cookbooks and such. We call it Cheeseburger Soup. Cook some burger with some onion and garlic, add some carrot and celery, mushrooms if you have some. Then add broth and diced potatoes and cook a bit, then thicken the soup and add some grated cheese. I'm sure that my original recipe called for a can of cream of mushroom soup but I converted it since I rarely buy those and prefer to make my own. Often, I post the recipe here first and then later put it over on the web site and index it, but in this case the recipe is already over there, so click on through.

Last night I only had 2 cups of chicken broth in the freezer so I used those up and added 2 cups of water plus 2 tsp of beef bouillon for the broth.

I like to make a quick drop biscuit for dinner periodically. They're good plain, but they're also good with a bit of grated cheese added. You could also add some garlic powder or minced garlic, chives, or other herbs of course. I use my KitchenAid mixer to mix these up rather than doing the hand "cutting in" or the food processor.

2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
4 Tbs shortening
1 cup milk or buttermilk or sour milk

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the cheese and mix that a bit. Add the shortening and mix in (or cut in if you're doing it properly by hand) until well mixed. Add the milk all at once and mix just until moistened.

Drop by soup spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. You should be able to make 9 or 10 good sized biscuits from this. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes.

Blog versus CheapCooking.com

I don't normally ask for comments, but I'm curious about what people are reading. This blog is part of a larger site, CheapCooking. The blog is a more casual journal-like accounting of my own cooking. I started it as a means to keep track of things for my own use. I can see it drives a lot of traffic, but I'm curious as to whether folks who land here at the blog go look at the big web site or not. Or do people who land on the web site, click on the blog link and come read this?

So if you have a spare moment, let me know. How did you get here? And what did you read?

Thanks,

Ellen

Orthodontist night

My eldest is in braces this year. I'm realizing I need to adjust my menu plans a bit to adjust for the "night of sore teeth", typically the night after she's gone to the orthodontist for her monthly appointment.

Tonight, even tuna melts sounded "too hard" for her. Ouch! She had some of the applesauce I made this afternoon, plus some chicken noodle soup and macaroni and cheese. I gave the younger one a treat and barbecued some hot dogs for her. We'll do tuna melts another night I guess.

It was funny. My eldest asked for chicken noodle soup this morning, as she ate rice pudding for breakfast. (You might notice a trend here. We have apple pie for dessert one night, then have it for breakfast the next day. We have rice pudding for dessert one night, then have it for breakfast the next day!) Anyway, she asked for chicken noodle soup and I said sure, thinking she meant the canned stuff, which I do keep on hand for lunches and such. She actually prefers the "boxes" macaroni and cheese to my homemade. I thought it was the same with soups. After homework, she went off to swim team and then came home starving, but still with sore teeth. She saw the chicken soup on the stove and said "Oh. I don't want that. I wanted your soup."

Now I'm feeling like I should make some soup for dinner tomorrow night. But if I do I'm sure her teeth won't be sore and she'll be wanting something to chomp down on. On the other hand, if I make what we call frog eye soup they'll scarf it down. Maybe with some Welsh Rarebit, which I haven't made in ages. Summer's ending and my mind starts going for those cold weather dishes.

Apple Butter

I've been making fried apples, apple pies, and apple crisp, not to mention slicing an endless number of apples up for snacks and lunches. Over the weekend I decided to make apple butter. I was originally going to just make "a batch" and enjoy it, refrigerated.

But somehow I started cleaning out the garage over the weekend and that led me to look up into the storage area a previous owner had built, only to see the myriad empty boxes. You could tell a lot about my professional freelance career, perhaps, by analyzing those boxes. From a very old Packard Bell box to the latest Dell; from a cheap no-name scanner to the last HP LaserJet I bought several years ago. A friend offered to come over with his truck and go to the dump with me to drop the boxes for recycling. Well, not only did he show up to help with that, he climbed up and pulled down boxes that existed in this house before I even moved in 16 (!) years ago, which was more than I had hoped for! Flattened old wardrobe boxes and boxes stuffed with paper, plus my own computer boxes. We pulled the Styrofoam out of everything, flattened them, and loaded up his truck. No dump fee for recyclable stuff! What a treat! Now, I have the Styrofoam to get rid of but since a typical week has me only filling my garbage container halfway, I'll be through with that in no time.

Removing all those old boxes revealed my secret, semi-forgotten stash of canning supplies. Boxes of quart Mason jars. My mom's old huge canning pot for hot water baths. And inside the pot was a funnel, tongs, the rack to hold the jars, a few boxes of lids, and her old food mill.

I grew up with the secure feeling of rows of glass jars of food stowed away. One house we lived in had what we called "the storage room," a long "hall" with no exit, lined on each side with sliding panels that revealed shelves. This was when we lived "in the country" and during that time, to the best of my recollection, we always had a huge garden and my mother would can applesauce, jams and jellies of various types, peaches, pears, stewed tomatoes, dill pickles, and probably more things than I can remember. Dessert was often "go pick a jar of fruit." But I hated the stewed tomatoes that seemed a winter mainstay for our vegetable dish. A small bowl of stewed tomatoes appeared at the table nearly every night in the winter. Ugh. I love tomatoes today, but I'm not sure I would eat stewed tomatoes even now. The pickles, though, were better than anything you could ever buy. The canned fruit was either off our own trees or locally grown and bought by the lug. There's another story in there about how we, as kids, used to pick apples for the guy that made cider locally.

When I moved into this house I live in now, with its 14 fruit trees (or perhaps more when we moved in), I decided to make applesauce one year. With four apple trees, you'd think it's a natural. However, whomever planted the trees here did a remarkable job of staggering the fruit production. Lemons are available about 8 months of the year. Cherries come in around Memorial Day. My first apple tree, a tart green cooking apple, comes ripe in June. Plums come in the summer. The apricot tree has since died, but the blood peaches I planted come in September. There used to be a fig tree as well. Now in September I have two large apple trees full of fruit and it's a bit overwhelming. Later in December when the last winter apple comes ripe, I'll be able to really enjoy it as the nearly final fruit of the year, although it, the persimmon tree, and the orange tree are typically good through January or February. March through May are fairly barren except for lemons. The fruit trees are part of how we measure the passing of time here.

Anyway, the first few years, before I found someone who knew how to prune the trees for me, the apples were way overproducing and much of the fruit was too high to pick, so it would come falling down to the ground from on high and get split open. I bought a fruit picker with an extendable pole, which helped. But the apples were coming ripe faster than I could pick bags of them to give away. I asked my Mom to come down and help me can some applesauce. She said sure and brought me her equipment, which she said she was done with. We cooked apples all day long and canned I don't know how many quarts of applesauce. We were both exhausted. As I recall, I had a baby or toddler at the time, so was dealing with that at the same time. And at the end of the day, my Mom looked over our rows of glass jars of applesauce and said "That's it. I've taught you. I'm done. I don't ever want to do this again."

Over the years I've followed the general guidelines from Stocking Up : The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide and some recipes from Fine Preserving. I made some spiced cherry jam one year, which was fantastic, and some lemon and orange marmalade another year. And I've done various frozen batches of tomato sauce, applesauce, and more. But in general, the whole canning thing has scared me somehow. But I saw the stuff up there and saw the many apples left on the tree, despite all my crisps and pies and decided to do "something small" like apple butter. I picked the apples this morning after the youngest left for school., cooked them down with some cider while I worked this morning, took a break to run them through my KitchenAid food strainer attachment, then through the batch into my slow cooker for the final stages of cooking, coming down every half hour or so to stir things up. At some point I added some honey, cinnamon, allspice, and ground cloves. I didn't measure the spices though. I did start with:

5 pounds of apples, sliced (not cored or peeled or anything)
3 cups apple cider

I cooked this in my big stockpot until the apples were mush. I love my KitchenAid strainer attachment (and use it when I cook up pumpkins also) but a hand food mill would work as well. I took all the good stuff and put it in the slow cooker on high, stirring until it thickened. I added the spice and sweetener about when I put my big old canning pot half full of water on the stove to come to a boil.

I probably ended up adding about:

2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp allspice

These are fairly sweet apples though. Tart ones would probably require more honey or sugar. I'm not sure what kind mine are since I didn't plant them. Perhaps Red Delicious that don't get too red since we don't have the cold nights here. I took all of the ones this morning from the red-skinned tree. The other tree that's ripe right now is a Golden Delicious I think. I just picked this tree because it was closer to the kitchen.

I put my jars in the dishwasher to clean them, then put them in a sink of hot water until I was ready. After the apple butter thickened and the big pot of water came to a boil, I took another break from work and filled the jars, leaving 1/2" of headroom. Put the jars into the boiling water and processed for 10 minutes. As they cooled, on several layers of towel, I heard the familiar PING! as the lids sealed. There was half a jar left over and I stuck that in the frig.

The girls each had a taste as they got home from school and wanted to sit and eat it like applesauce. I had to promise to make a batch of applesauce later. So I brought down the quart jars and cleaned up a dozen of them.

The applesauce recipes I see all say to core and peel but I don't see why I can't do what I did here, and cook it all up with core and peel and just run it through the strainer. I'm a pretty good apple peeler and can regular impress the girls by peeling an apple in one fell swoop, with a long apple peel in one piece. But pushing it all through the strainer seems much simpler.