apples – When Life Gives You Lemons

Be careful what you wish for. Indeed. But one only realises this truism retrospectively. In early spring, I’d admire the blossoms on the trees and wish for a good harvest. Dreamily, I’d imagine making jams and pies and crumbles – all the ways I could enjoy and preserve my fruits.

**The promise of things to come** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Wandering about the garden, complimenting the trees on their constellations of blossoms; stroking their leaves to show them that I care; I hadn’t quite thought through the consequences of my actions. Yes, like King Charles, I do talk to my trees and perhaps I communicated my desires a little too well this year. Because, this year, to counter the absolute failure of my vegetable crops, my fruit trees have outdone themselves.

A sweet start

The first fruits to appear were the berries: raspberry, mulberry, blackcurrant and redcurrant. Each morning, I’d toddle down the garden to pick what had appeared – some going into the bowl with my cereal and some directly to the freezer.

**Mini mulberries**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Next up were my sweet plums – early and delicious. I’d serve them instead of biscuits and give them away to anyone who wanted them. So far, so good. I had plenty to freeze and plenty to share. Everything was under control.

Then the freezer began to fill and more and more fruits ripened. Some, like the greengages and alpine strawberries were consumed immediately after picking, but the rest, well, no-one could eat that many.

Apples, apples every where

My fabulous old apple tree clearly liked the wet spring and warm summer, because it has excelled all expectations. Every day I pick the windfalls, and every day there are more.

**Apples and plums** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

My miniature Russet apples were ripe, so they have been picked and stored in the fruit bowl. Extra apples have been set aside to give to friends. This afternoon, I’ll need to make some apple puree – a perfect baking supplement for those who don’t use eggs. By putting the puree in two tablespoon amounts in small plastic bags and freezing, I shall have enough egg replacements to last the year!

Waste not, want not

As anyone who has read my blog will know, I hate waste. My gorgeous daughter-in-law, Genevieve, gave me the perfect recipe book: PlantYou: Scrappy Cooking. In it, the author shows you how to use up all the scraps that otherwise might make kitchen waste. I was fascinated.

When preparing apples, there are equal quantities of cores and skin as flesh. Even these can be used and only then, the left-overs thrown into the compost. Okay, it is a bit fiddly and time consuming, but I love a challenge and the opportunity to use up everything.

Take these – and make these –

My apple cider vinegar is happily burbling away on the window sill and the apple scrap ‘honey’ is in the fridge. The ‘honey’ is perfect for porridge and yogurt and delicious on toast. It will keep in the fridge for a month, though I suspect it will keep a bit longer than that. And if you don’t want to do it straight away, store a large freezer bag full of scraps in the freezer and make on a rainy afternoon. (Sadly, I made mine on a boiling hot day making myself and the kitchen, very hot indeed. The fridge objected and promptly konked out. Luckily for me, my husband guessed what was wrong and both the fridge and myself cooled down and went back into operation!)

Food for free

Perhaps it is my Celtic ancestry or perhaps it is my innate love of foraging, but there few things that give me more joy than finding food for free. Mariia is clearly similarly inclined. When we came back from the West Country proudly bearing our full punnet of blackberries, she produced the 1.5 kilos that she had picked with Hermione!

But one can never have enough berries and the season is too short to tarry. Our local park has a magnificent and very old mulberry tree. As a consequence, it has the biggest, fattest mulberries around. Determined to get a little bit of its bounty, we all set off one warm summer evening. We returned with another 1.5 kg.

**Putting my mini-mulberries to shame**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Unfortunately, many park visitors are not aware that they are edible (though I tell everyone that passes) or perhaps they know and don’t want stained clothing. Nothing is entirely free. The price tag for blackberries is scratches; mulberries, purple blooms on stained hands and tops.

Swap

And if you have more than enough of one thing, then barter is the way to go. My book group buddy Lesley was leaving town for a few days, but her plums were ready to pick. In a wonderfully sociable way, she invited us round to harvest them and have a cup of tea.

I brought a basket of apples, and Viv brought some delicious tomatoes fresh from her allotment. Everyone left happy! I made more jam and of course, had to check that it was okay. It was a sacrifice I was prepared to make.

For me, the most wonderful part of having a good harvest is that I can share it. Anyone who comes to the door is likely to leave with a bag of something. And I can make jams and honeys and vinegars to give as tiny gifts too. My great friend Liz, whose apple harvest is even greater than my own, has her apples pressed and gives bottles of her truly delicious juice away. When I took the children to primary school, an elderly chap would leave a wheelbarrow filled with apples outside his house on the route, and many an apple crumble was made from his generosity.

When we have plenty, it makes sense to share it. In fact, the only thing I have had a shortage of is jam jars. I sent a plea to all my friends and now, I hope, I have enough. (And some will be returned filled!)

How do you like your fruit?

This year’s abundance is causing me to think hard about how to utilise and store it successfully. I’ve made crumbles, jams, vinegars and ‘honey’. I’d like to try making pickled blackberries and to attempt drying mulberries. My freezer is full, so I’ll need to think more laterally. I could make apple strings for dried apples, apple butter and if I get more adventurous still, fruit powders.

Nature marches on and there is no time to waste. There are still pears and quinces to harvest, so it will be late autumn when I can put my preserving tools away.

Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. After all, the supermarket stocks everything I need. But where, I ask you, is the fun in that?

The last week has passed in something of a blur. It has been dominated by two things: apples and puppy training. The apples, are reaching the end of their life cycle; Hermione is just beginning hers.

Under the apple tree. Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Apples, apples everywhere

The high winds we have been experiencing all week have certainly made apple picking easier. Instead of reaching up, I just reach down to the ground. We now have an absolute glut of fruit and despite my best efforts, the trug never diminishes.

But there is joy in plenty, not least because there is enough to share. Friends and neighbours have all been enjoying the fruits of my tree. And for those neighbours who are also keeping productive gardens, we get to swap our surplus for theirs.

My only sadness is that I can’t bake cake to share. That will have to wait till next year.

50 ways to cook your apples

I admit that I am exaggerating a little bit, but I have been learning all sorts of new ways to eat and preserve this most versatile fruit. So far, I’ve made apple vinegar, apple berry jam, apple rings, spiced apple compot, apples for the freezer, baked apples, apple puree (which is perfect for vegan baking) and my favourite so far: toffee apple fruit leather. I’ve been meaning to make fruit leather (fruit roll-ups) for years and now have finally done it. If you have surplus fruits, I highly recommend it. It’s perfect for little snacks. And if you have a brilliant apple recipe you’d like to share, please post it in the comments section.

How do you like your apples? Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Distractions

Of course, whilst doing all this, I’ve had a little helper. Well, helper might not be quite the right word. Companion would be more appropriate. Hermione is very happy to sit in the kitchen and watch, but needs numerous breaks to run about the garden and relieve herself.

So every forty minutes or so, my husband or I don our rain jackets and run outside. The apple tree serves a purpose here too, as Hermione loves to eat the fallen fruit – though sadly only the most rotten and revolting looking. The capacity of a dog’s stomach to consume the most disgusting food, never fails to amaze me. She neglects, of course, any of the more edible windfalls.

Who needs a ball when you can have an apple? Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Training

With her jabs complete, Hermione is now free to run wild in the garden. Her breed is naturally intelligent and requires a great deal of stimulation and challenge. Having mastered the art of sit, paw and recall within days, we thought we better add some more difficult tasks. So now our garden has become a sort of mini adventure playground. The gardening stool makes for an excellent ‘tunnel’ to run under or, when tipped upside down, to jump over. We have a raised path with steps that she rather alarmingly runs up and down and low wall from which she takes terrifying leaps.

Like children, she most enjoys toys that are not toys at all: an empty plastic bottle, a plastic flower pot, a stick and a hose attachment are all kept in the toy box outside. The advantage of this is that as soon as one of these is gnawed to pieces, another can be found. We are working on her retrieval skills (she is a bird dog after all) and she once managed to bring an apple. This dog might come in useful after all.

Hermione with her favourite toy: a rotating hose pipe attachment. Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Puppy lessons

While we have been teaching Hermione, she of course, has been teaching us. When you spend time outside with a child or a puppy, you realise that the world is an infinitely fascinating place. Every leaf, branch and insect is something to be explored and this sense of wonder is something that we should all nurture – not least if we are to have any hope of healing our damaged world.

The apple tree, to me, epitomises the generosity of nature. She gives and gives. The humble cooking apple may not be the most exotic of fruits, but with it I have been able to make endless treats that will remind us of summer even in the depth of winter. And I try not to take any for granted. My apples are hardly supermarket perfect, but a little effort on my end means that very few are wasted. It has taken a year for this fruit to be produced. Surely I can take a few minutes to remove a bruise or insect damage.

For me, living with wild things (and Hermione is certainly wild sometimes) helps ground me. Living as we do in the world of the mind or the cyber world of internet and social media, it is easy to become detached from what actually is.

In the virtual world, our desires are but a thought or a click away. In the real world, we need patience and hard work to get what we want. And paradoxically, it is the latter that brings a more lasting joy.

So, like a doting grandparent, I shall leave you with one last picture of Hermione with her new best friend – a snail.

Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Tag: apples

Glut!