Tart Varietals

I cleaned the top of my stove, just for this picture

There are two things that I have noticed that kids go apeshit over, and those are automatic pencil sharpeners and mechanical apple peelers. The kind of apple peeler where you impale the fruit, and then rotate a handle and it cores, peels, and will also cut the apple up in a spiral if you want it to. That is a handy device to have, but I did feel a twinge of guilt over buying the battery-operated pencil sharpener. I mean, really... can't we just manually rotate the blade? But no, I bought one and kids beg for pencils to sharpen.

I personally go apeshit over my food mill and slow cookers, especially after making two bushels of apples into applesauce. You don't even need the apple peeler, you just chop the apple into quarters or so, throw the whole thing in the pot and then grind it up in the food mill. I put no sweeteners in mine, just apples. I started out with the kettle on the stove, but then I brought in the slow cookers and they work fantastic for making applesauce. I haven't gotten quite through the two bushels yet, but my projection is that I will have about 24 quarts. I got a deal, half-off, from a farmer at the Ypsi Farmers Market. He put together a mix of tart varietals for me. He gave me seconds, so I got all the apples for $18. There's Jonathans, Galas, Red Cort, Granny Smiths, and a few other kinds that I forget. That works out to about 75 cents a quart... not bad! I'm putting them in my freezer as part of my winter Avian Flu/Great Depression food stash.