Apples apples apples

If you have been reading for a while you will know that we live close to an amazing orchard where we get most of our fruit from.  This time of year there is an abundance of apples, and when I was out there yesterday there were 10kg bags of ‘pink ladies’ for $10. These are one of my favourite apples and that is a serious bargain!

Pink ladies are lovely sweet tangy fruit which are delicious to eat and also make excellent cooking apples – no sugar is needed.  A few years ago I brought one of these apple peelers, which the kids love to use… It peels, slices and cores the apples in about 15 seconds. Even a three year old can use it:

While we are peeling I sit the apples in a bowl of water with a squeeze of lemon so they dont go brown. My handy helper and I then loaded up the dehydrator…

And filled a pot for some yummy stewed apple to have for dessert:

Actually one of my favourite things about the peeler is that it peels the skin off in one long piece (they are so pretty), and perfect for our worm farm.  I did take some photos to show you but they were a bit yucky to be fair!

Eight hours later we packed up two containers with dried apple, but I have to confess we have eaten one of these already.  The dehydrator is still out so Ill fill it up again this afternoon and this time make some to store for later! I picked up the dehydrator second hand some years ago for about $20 and I love to use it to make dried fruit.  Apples, strawberries, plums and feijoas are our favourite… I store the dried fruit in air tight containers in the freezer and there it stays happily until its all eaten (a ‘lost’ bag of feijoa lasted for over a year and was still perfectly delicious!).

PS. Home dried fruit makes the most delicious bircher muesli!