Domestic Goddess

I have been so domestic lately. End of October is always the time to clear the garden. Then one has to dice/chop/freeze/can the final gifts of the season.

Plus, friends like to cheerfully ditch their excess garden produce. They don't want it to go to waste. I appreciate that, but it makes for a late nite or two or... trying to get everything processed.

Still I have found that I'm excited by one thing above all else...Fuji Apples!

Folks started dropping apples by and when it looked like I was stockpiling for a national emergency I finally pulled my dehydrator out, borrowed another one from a friend and got to work.

Weather conditions this year have produced an apple that is intensely sweet and flavorful. Dried - these apples are insanely tasty!

Padwon gets the cores, peels and any rejects. The only down side to this is, as I take a small bowl to her morning & night, she enjoys it so much that she slobbers and slurps and ends up with apple juice/foam running down the sides of her mouth.

This is a problem you say?

Well, only because I groom her when she's eating and usually end up giving her a short belly scratch. She likes this a lot and has a tendency to run her muzzle thru my hair as I'm bent over. I guess it's her form of encouraging me? (more, more!) Kinda has the opposite effect tho when big, sticky, gooey, globs of used apple foam are being wiped all over my head.

Anyway...

Some of my friends who have orchards have noted that while the flavor of the apples this year is good, the overall yield has been down. Add to this the criteria for marketable sizing and it's not looking to be a very profitable year.

Americans are spoiled, aren't we? Look at our supermarkets. We demand perfection in color, size & taste. While some of us are willing to pay a premium for excellence, most of us want it, want it now, and want it for a reallllly good price...

As I prepare these wonderfully tasty Fuji's for the dryer  I find there is not a size or shape that I can not utilize. Lunch box to extra fancy? Bring 'em on!

Farm Boy once mentioned that one of our neighbors was compelled to tell him how impressed he was by me.

"And," I inquired - "Why is that?"

"Because," he said, "when he offered you apples, you didn't pick thru them, just took them as they came."

????

Really?

That's all it took to impress him?

Y'know, they all eats the same. Doesn't it strike anyone else as incredibly RUDE to sit and pick thru a box of free apples/produce and say, "I'll have this & this, oh - not that!"

???

Besides, if I can't use them, well...

I don't believe Padwon has ever met an apple she didn't like.