apples

My inspiration this morning when I woke up was to dehydrate them. I looked at my two dehydrator books and then went out on the web. There are a lot of things we can do with dehydrated apples. I will see how the apples look and taste before doing another batch. I am using an Excalibur nine tray with a thermostat. I've used and thrown away a round stackable one with no temperature controls. I threw away food :( We could of saved money by just buying the Excalibur. Sometimes spending the money up front is the most cost effective way of doing something.

I am going to save the peeling and cores to make apple butter on the next batch. My mother said my grandmother did that with apples, peaches, and pears. I have done it once in the past and it made the best apple butter. You put the cores and peeling in a stock pot with some water. You boil it until it thickens, then you run the pulp through a tomato strainer similar to this one :



The one I have will do raw tomatoes, raspberries, and apple peelings and cores. I taste for sweetness, then add spices, and cook down to apple butter consistence(spelling?). The batch of apple butter I made this way I didn't add any sugar. The apples I used were sweet enough! I must confess I don't like overly sweet apple butter. I like it on the tart side!

The washer calls!

Have a good day!

Judy