Old news: apples

I hate trying to post after having not posted for, uh, let's just call it quite some time. It feels like whatever material I use to get back into regular (I very much hope it will be regular, but I don't dare to promise) posting should be good. Extra good, even. But that's kind of a lot of pressure. So I'm just going to pick up where I left off and give you a very outdated post about apples. Because we made our first-ever orchard trip at the beginning of October and, holy cow, how did it get to be December already?

So...apples.

We got them. And we made stuff out of them.



Pies. I use the recipe for uncooked apple pie filling and deluxe butter pie crust from The Joy of Cooking and like them very much. (Best pie crust ever. Butter is awesome. In my little world, shortening-heavy pie crust recipes are for people who care more about "flaky" than flavor. Which is obviously insane.)



Applesauce. For the baby, so it is unsweetened and silky smooth. She isn't eating it yet, so I can't report on the success of the venture at this time.



Wondering what to do with all the peels? Crispy apple snacks!



I had lots of peels from the applesauce (no food mill plus target audience of baby equaled peeling the apples) and didn't want them to go to waste (even composty waste). So I spread them on a cookie sheet, sprinkled them with cinnamon, and baked them at 200 degrees for a couple of hours. Once cooled, they were crunchy and yummy. Though the long, bent, crispy strands did sometimes remind me of giant bug legs, which was unfortunate. I was pretty (crazily) happy about the apple peel snacks. I felt very thrifty and resourceful. I like that.

Anyway...I hope to be back soon and more often. I'm working on things. Truthfully, it's not that I haven't had things to post, as evidenced by the fact that I've been sitting on these photos for more than a month. And it's not that I haven't wanted to post. But the past few months I've felt as though I can either make the time to post, or I can make the time to DO the things I would otherwise post about. It's felt hard to make room for both. But I do love sharing here, so I think I need to work on making that time a bit more regularly than I have been.