Apple Day!

We decided that we missed prepping pears for the dehydrator and ordered a 20 pound box of organic juice quality apples to prep and dry.

Easy!

We used the peeler gizmo and hubby helped Adrienne and I, we got it done in about an hour.

Q: Can I leave the skin on?
A: Yes, you can leave the skin on, but it gets rather tough. (The piggies are getting our skins and cores!)
To keep the apples from getting brown (the lighting is why these don't look so good), we mixed 1T citric acid and 1T ascorbic acid in 2 quarts water, and tossed them in. (just don't leave them in longer than 30 minutes)

9 trays full and drying right now!!!!! So much easier than pears!!!

We ran out of space in the dehydrator, so we added a few old apples that were running around, and had enough apples for 2 pies.

(this is what the solution looked like when we got done- kind of murky...)

So Adrienne experimented with freezing one pie's worth for Thanksgiving.
Put apples in boiling water for 2 min and then remove them to a bowl of ice water til cool, and then pack and freeze.

And the other half she cooked up and made 2 half pie/cobblers. one for tonight, and one for the freezer.

This is what she did this time:
8-9 cups Apples
2t. Cinnamon
1t. Nutmeg
1/2t. homemade dried Orange rind
1/2t. salt
some butter
Some water
(you could just use 3/4 -1 cup brown or white sugar)
a splash of Molasses
1/2 t. Stevia
1/2c. Xylitol

Cook it a while on the stove, and then dump it in your pan(s), top with homemade crust (thanks Mom), bake awhile @ 375ish until filling is bubbly and crust seems nicely browned.

The next morning the Dried Apples were done:

After putting up literally hundreds of pounds of pears, a 20 pound box of apples was like a walk in the park! I made a note to self, next time order TWO boxes!

(Adrienne really packed the first jar too full, otherwise it would have been two full half gallon jars!)