The day started with a surprise from my husband - he insisted that he had found a wild cherry fruit tree near our home with nickle sized fruit. A quick ride confirmed my suspicion that what he had found was a huge crab apple tree. Despite being literally surrounded by wild apple trees, these is the first real crab apple tree we've found. I can't wait to try making some crab apple jelly once the fruit ripens fully. In addition we found wild pear and elderberries that should be ready soon.
Not one to disappoint with unripe "cherries" my husband recommended taking a short walk to pick apples. While we are working to cultivate our own home orchard most of our trees are not fruit bearing yet. Luckily for us, we are literally surrounded by wild apple trees. I ended up picking 2 large buckets of fresh sweet apples while sampling several trees that should be ready in the coming weeks.
Fresh apples beg to be made into all kinds of delicious baked goods - pies, breads, cakes and the like. I quickly put these to work making one of my favorites - homemade apple sauce!
Apple Sauce
15 lbs Apples
5 cups water
10 Tbs lemon juice
4 cups sugar
2 Tb cinnamon
Before you get started, pour your water into a large, heavy bottom pot. Add lemon juice. Peel your apples. If you have a apple peeler and corer - this is a great way to put it to use. The rest of us will have to be satisfied with our paring knives.
Cut and core the apples. Rough cut into chunks - no need to be perfect here.
Drop chunks into your pot of lemon water to help minimize browning. If you still get a little bit of browning - no worries - it won't hurt your finished product - I promise!
Once you've peeled your full amount of apples, transfer your pot to the stove. If you plan to can your finished sauce, this is a good time to also put your canning pot on to boil to sterilize your jars.
Bring your apples to a boil over medium heat and then reduce to simmer. Simmer 10-20 minutes, until your apples are tender. How long it takes will depend on how small you cut your apple chunks. Take your apples off the heat and run through a food mill to soften. If, like me, you don't have a food mill - improvise! I used the grinder attachment for my stand mixer. You could also just smash up the apples with a potato masher!
Return your applesauce to your pot. Add sugar and cinnamon and over low heat, stir until sugar is fully dissolved. From here, your applesauce can be eaten as is or stored by either freezing or canning.
To can your applesauce, ladle hot sauce into sterilized pint jars.
Process via boiling water method for 10 minutes.
Turn off heat an allow to sit in the water for 5 minutes before transferring to a towel covered counter or table to cool and seal. Let sit for 12 hours, check seals and store in a cool, dry place. Makes 9 pints.
If the apple picking wasn't enough, it was also time for one of our treks through the woods looking for dead trees that need to be cut to cull out the woods, avoid falling trees and get wood for our home for the winter. My husband and I walked through marking trees for friends and family to help us take down and gather.
Athena couldn't wait to get up to the woods. As you can tell - she was way ahead of us and pretty impatient for us to get there!
I got to play with some spray paint marking trees to come down.
I found a toad hiding out in a log - how neat is that?
I think these logs with the rotted out center have a very cool look - the wheels are turning on a mini furniture project!
Athena was thoroughly tired out when we got back home!
As a reward for our work in the woods, we celebrated with another star of our day - these delicious smoker ribs with homemade rub. We're still fairly new to smoking, but I think these rub combination turned out excellent!
Hickory Brown Sugar Rib Rub
1 1/2 cups brown sugar3 Tb Hickory Smoke Salt
1 Tb paprika
2 tsp Garlic Powder
2 tsp dried Oregano
The key to this rub is the hickory smoke salt. I have just recently discovered this and couldn't wait to incorporate into a rib rub. I buy mine at a bulk spice place, but now that I've started using it I've noticed it in several of my local grocery stores. This batch should provide enough rub to do a half rack of ribs. If you have extra rub, you can store it in a mason jar with your other spices.
Slather your ribs with your prepared rub, and cook in your smoker to your manufacturer's specs for ribs. We used apple and hickory wood chips in the smoker to highlight the sweet and smoky already present into the rib rub. The final ribs came out extremely tender with a nice crust.
After a such an eventful day including some excellent food, there's little to do to top it. I settled for a cold microbrew, a long soak in the whirlpool tub and a good book. Happy Labor Day All!
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