Apples Anyone?

We have gone to the Apple N' Pork Festival the past couple of years. There are tons and tons of craft and sales booths, and then music, and of course, food! It is held on the last weekend of September.

When we attended this festival for the first time last year, Jelly Bean noticed this banner and said "Look Mommy, you are older than the Apple N' Pork Festival!" (I had just turned 44.) So this year, I said it myself "Yes, I am STILL older than the Apple N' Pork Festival!"

There are lots and lots of food booths, but this is generally where we eat. You can get the yummiest loaded baked potatoes around!

Jelly Bean

Super. Sigh. He is getting just too big.

Grandma S was visiting that weekend and she came with us to the festival. Flower and Grandma S are looking at earrings.

Flower trying on a headband and glasses

The rest of family waiting in line for funnel cakes. I am not a fan but the rest of them are!

It was cloudy that day, but never rained, thankfully. In this shot, you can see a bunch of the booths. We never hit them all. We look at a couple rows and call it good.

October 2010 in Pictures: Autumn is Everywhere

I took a bunch of pictures in the first part of October, and then I thought the camera was broken. I recently discovered that the camera might not be ALL the way dead. But I took pictures in the last part of the month on my phone and the pictures were of mixed quality.

We started the month of October with going to an Autumnal Celebration at the Horticultural Center. This is our third year of attending. The weather was sunny but windy.

Super running on top of hay bales.

They always have a bunch of scarecrows on display. We won these scarecrows. The name was "Preschoolers" Perfect for this preschool teacher!

A picture of all three kids on the hay rack ride. This is one of my favorite all time pictures of the children.

We also went to Starved Rock Park and did a bunch of hiking.

A picture of Super in one of the canyons.

The next weekend, we went to an Apple Orchard and got a BUNCH of apples. I made applesauce and dried apples.

The night before we went to the Apple Orchard, Jelly Bean fell off her bunk bed ladder and broke her wrist. We thought then that she would only have a cast on for three weeks, but we found out today that she will be in a cast for another 4 weeks. At least. :(

Flower is on Student Council this year, and they were on a float for the local high school's homecoming parade. The theme, if you can't guess, is the 70s. Pictures from the 70s of me had much less tie-dye and much more plaid than they show on this float. Flower is in the middle with Peace Sign glasses.

We also went to the University's Homecoming Parade and Football game. We had a great time. The weather was beautiful that weekend - in the lower 80s!

The following weekend, we went to the other Autumnal celebration that we usually go to - this one was at the local Nature Center. It was, if you can't tell from the picture, a little wet that day. Unfortunately for us, it rained the whole time we were there, but it cleared later in the day. We love decorating pumpkins from natural materials instead of carving. This dude is still out on our front porch (as well as the Preschooler scarecrows. And MANY gourds. My kids are all about decorating with gourds this year.)

We finished out the month with Halloween (Halloween pictures will be in a separate post) and a visit down to Springfield. We went to the Illinois Capital and then the Dana-Thomas House. It was cold AND windy that day, but we still had a great time.

Garden Update - Mid September

Roma Tomatoes and my sole eggplant

Apples

Super holding the eggplant (I swear he has other clothes. It is just a big coincidence that he is wearing the same shirt in all recent pictures. Really.)

Well, I had big plans to plant a fall garden. It didn't happen, and I think it is a little late now. Which is mostly fine, except that I spent about 5 hours over at the garden weeding to get it ready for fall planting. Oh well, it was good exercise, I guess.

The first few weeks of August, it was just too hot and dry to plant. (After the wettest June in YEARS, it has been mostly rain-free since then.) Then I was either out of money, out of time, or out of town until this weekend.

The eggplant, I planted three eggplant plants forever ago, like the end of May. One of them just sat there, and didn't look dead or anything, but never really grew any bigger. I eventually pulled it. Then there was one that grew a little, but never had any flowers on it. It is still in the garden, but I'll probably pull it next time I am out there. The last one grew pretty well, but I didn't see flowers until probably August. I had given up on all of them by that time, but I hadn't pulled any of the plants yet, so when I saw flowers, I decided to let it go. We haven't eaten the eggplant yet, so I'll have to let you know if it was worth it.

Tomatoes have been pretty steady since the end of July. I've been picking them and then running them through the food saucer and then putting the pulp in the freezer. Some day in October, I'll defrost the pulp and boil it down and can them. My sister and I did it that way last year, and it worked out well, so I think I'll do it that way again. I'm not sure how many more tomatoes I'll get. Maybe another couple bagfulls. I won't have as much as last year because it got so cool so fast, but I'm not splitting the harvest with my sister either (since she went and moved away on me!) so I'll probably end up with about the same amount of tomato sauce anyway.

My garden plot (and about 10 other peoples' plots) are in an area behind our church. A bunch of years ago, somebody also planted some apple trees out there. They aren't maintained at all, as far as I can tell, so they aren't sprayed or pruned or anything, and they are there for anybody who would like some. So I took the preschool kids out to the garden the other day, and we picked some apples. I'll boil them and run them through the saucer and make some applesauce with most of them, although I plan on drying some apple slices too and probably making some Apple Dumplings. These apple dumplings are probably the best thing that I've ever had. SERIOUSLY YUMMY!

In a couple of weeks, I'll probably go over to the garden plot and pull plants and throw some straw down. I am going to create at least two raised beds in the back yard for spring planting, and trying to figure out a place to put some raspberries, and a dwarf apple tree and a dwarf pear tree (these will also be planted in the spring, but I want to get the areas selected and prepped.) The raised beds will be mostly for salad stuff (spinach, carrots, radishes, etc.) so that I can just step out the back door and get my salad everyday. During the summer, I'll have some other crops in there, but then when it gets cool, I'll plant salad stuff again.

I'm a contradiction, that's for sure . . .

I've been busy (don't I always say that when I haven't blogged for awhile?) with the end of summer and school starting up again. I'm not happy at all that Fall just seemed to arrive all of a sudden. I was hoping for an Indian Summer, or at least a more gradual move to cool temperatures. But temperatures have been highs of 70s and lows in the 40s for over a week now and it isn't looking good for a return to 80s and 90s. Thankfully, I do love Fall quite a bit . . . .

Anyway, over here in Simple Land, I've been busy with gardening and budgeting and canning and reading. LOTS of reading. I'm set to get starting with the actual start of writing my book next month, but I'm trying to get as much research done before the writing begins. Not that I won't do research along the way too, but not as much. And I've been busy with homeschooling and child care and getting used to Flower being back in public school.

Next week, we will have some surplus in the budget, and I've spent the last few weeks thinking about what I would like to use with some of the surplus. And I think I've decided.

I'll be purchasing:

1) Canning jars. Mostly in pint sizes but some more quart jars too. The jars are starting to go on sale, so even better, although I want to make sure and buy them before they are gone for the season.
2) Apples and Peaches. I'm hoping to can at least a couple dozen jars of sliced peaches and cinnamon applesauce.
3) An iPhone. :)

Contradictions, I tell you.

Apples

I want to make and can some applesauce. I know of a few apple orchards (Apple Blossom, Curtis) around here, but their prices are little steep for me. I don't need beautiful apples, just ones that will work for applesauce. So locals, anybody know where I can get some cheaper apples around here? I'd be willing to drive a bit - but probably not longer than about 30-40 miles. And non-locals, any tips on where you get your apples???

Maybe it is because we are talking about apples this week in Preschool, or because we are going to an apple orchard for a field trip on Friday, but I'm just craving all things Apple. Apple crisp, apple pie (I make a mean apple pie using the pie crust recipe from The Little House Cookbook), applesauce (with chunks in it, of course. And a touch of cinnamon.), apple dumplings, apple cider, apple donuts (LOVE these!)

Or maybe it is the nursery rhyme we are studying in preschool - "An Apple A Day"

An apple a day keeps the doctor away,
Apple in the morning, doctor's warning.
Roast apple at night, starves the doctor outright.
Eat an apple going to bed, knocks the doctor on the head.
Three times a day, seven days a week - ruddy apple, ruddy cheek.

It wasn't until I started teaching preschool that I'd heard the rest of the rhyme beyond "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" part. I might have an apple two or three times a week, but not 21 times. I guess I need to work on that, at least through the rest of September! I want those ruddy cheeks!

So in honor of Apple Dumpling Day, my sister and I made Apple Dumplings yesterday

See this post (under Food) for why we were celebrating Apple Dumpling Day.

First, we went over to the church and picked apples off the trees at the church. I JUST noticed on Saturday that there were even apples on the trees at church, and on Monday, my sister asked if we wanted to go over there to pick apples. We went out there and it was so much fun. We got out there about 6 pm, and picked apples for a little while, and we found a frisbee and the kids and the dads threw that around for a little while while my sister and I just chatted. There was a cool breeze in the air, and my kids all had hooded sweatshirts on, and the smell, and the giggling, and just being there was just perfect for a late summer night.

Yesterday, my sister came over around 2 pm to help me peel the apples. We found this recipe for Apple Dumplings, but we didn't have the recipe upstairs where we were peeling the apples, so we ended up peeling 16+ apples each because we were each going to make a double recipe and we thought that the recipes said 8 apples, not 8 slices. Whoops!

It was sort of an adventure because my sister had her baby there, who is 3 months old, and her 4 year old and I had the baby that I watch there, who is 4 months old, and then Super and the two other kids that I watch woke up from nap at 2:30, and then Jelly Bean, and my sister's two other kids came here after school at 3 pm, and between taking care of all the children, it took us until 4 pm to get the apples sliced and the pans loaded. I put the leftover slices in the dehydrator, so they didn't go to waste.

I put the two pans (we decided to just make a batch for each of our families, so we didn't end up doubling the recipe for each of us.) in my oven, and she took her kids and went home and ate dinner at their house, and we had dinner at our house, and then they came back over at 6:30 for dessert.

I took one taste, and seriously about fainted. It was SOOOOOOOOO good. I ate a whole piece because it was SOOOOOOOOOOOO good, but I had a tremendous belly ache afterwards. Which was totally worth it, but I think I will stop after a half a piece next time. Everyone agreed that it was one of the best things that they have ever had.

We will definitely be celebrating this holiday next year, and I anticipate that we will have Apple Dumplings a couple of more times during Autumn. Anybody else celebrate the day? If not, go ahead and celebrate it this week. The recipe is easy, and the results are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good (did I mention that already?)