Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café—Apple Fritters

I feel truly blessed to have all the family gather here for Sunday dinner.  (Well, at least the ones who are in town.  Not much can be done about those who are four hours away at school.)  I like to keep the meals a little simpler so that the Sabbath is more like the day of rest that it is supposed to be. 

And that means that I sometimes fail to make a dessert.

Fortunately, the younger family members will often step up to the plate.  One Sunday last month, Blueberry Girl and KOTPE got together and decided it was high time our family experienced some homemade apple fritters.  Blueberry Girl found the following recipe (with a couple of tweaks to make it more food storage-friendly) at Small Town Woman, and she and KOTPE went to work.

Fritters

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

4 teaspoons powdered milk

1/3 cup water

2 eggs

3 tablespoons applesauce

2 large apples peeled, cored, and diced (Granny Smith and Honeycrisp work well)

Oil for frying

Glaze

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon powdered milk

3 tablespoons water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the fritters, whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Make a well in the center and add water, eggs, and applesauce. Stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in apples.

Heat 1 1/2 inches of oil in heavy skillet or deep fryer to 375°F.  Carefully spoon about 1/4 cup of batter per fritter into the hot oil, spreading it out as you drop it. Cook each side until golden brown, about 2 minutes for each side.  Drain on paper towels.

Whisk together powdered sugar and powdered milk.  Stir in water and vanilla. Dip each fritter in the glaze, turning to coat both sides.  Place on wire racks to dry.

Family reviews:  Oh. My. Goodness.  We may need to add a little more powdered sugar to the pantry.  Fortunately, we have everything else in abundance.  These fritters are fabulous.  Incredible.  Instant hit.  And easier to make than doughnuts.  We scarfed them down immediately. 

Aaron’s only comment was that if the batter were just a little thinner and if they were, perhaps, fried twice, they would be just like a fritter from a donut shop.  The rest of us thought they were perfect, and that with only one trip into the fryer they would be healthier (ok, less unhealthy) than a fritter double-dipped into the oil. 

Links to related posts:

Navajo Fry Bread  

Churros  

Donuts  

References:

https://www.smalltownwoman.com/apple-fritter/

Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café—Apple Dips

When we moved into this house three years ago, there were several dozen apples on one of the apple trees, and just a few on the other.  I picked a couple of buckets and stored them in the garage refrigerator.  As I spent most of that month unpacking, I didn’t have time to research the apples and preserve them properly.  The apples from the tree with the most fruit lacked great flavor for fresh eating, so unfortunately, most of them went to waste. 

The following year, being uninitiated as to the horrors of worms in homegrown apples, I hadn’t done anything to prevent them.  So naturally, the worms made themselves comfortable and we didn’t get much in the way of usable fruit from the trees.

Last year, determined to avoid a repeat of the previous season’s disaster, I made some codling moth traps.  Those proved to be entirely unnecessary as a late freeze destroyed the entire crop.

This year, we have been blessed with a bumper crop of Liberty apples and there are still about a dozen McIntosh apples hanging on the other tree.  (I found the original tree tags in the paperwork left behind by the previous owners.  Also, we recently learned, or were reminded, that apple trees have on and off years, and thus produce a good crop only every other year.)  There hasn't been a single worm and I think only about a half dozen earwigs.

As the Liberty apples matured, I sampled one every week to ascertain when they’d be ready to harvest.  And as the flavor wasn’t improving to my liking, I decided to see if Google University would help me.  While some like it for fresh eating, apparently the Liberty apple (so named because it is naturally one of the most disease resistant varieties) is favored more for making applesauce and apple butter. 

I started making applesauce (indeed, Liberty applesauce is quite yummy) last week. However, based on my very inexact calculations, even if I can 48 quarts of applesauce this year, there are still going to be a lot of apples left for fresh eating.  And fortunately, I guess, Liberty apples store very well.  But as I said above, I didn’t like the fresh flavor that much.  Of course, in all likelihood, you don’t necessarily have a Liberty apple tree in your yard, but you may have one whose fresh flavor you or your family members don’t care so much for.  We all may have occasion to figure out a way to make fresh apples more palatable. 

My sister-in-law taught my children to dip apple wedges in dry Jell-O powder.  Becky just informed me that she has fond memories of that.  However, if you have a more sophisticated palate, or you really don’t want to use Jell-O, I’ve got you covered.

I thought it would be a good idea to investigate some recipes for an apple dip that would use common food storage ingredients.  I selected six different recipes from Food.com.  And then I realized that they were all the same basic recipe, but some had a little flavor tweak.

Basic Apple Dip

8 oz cream cheese (make it from your homemade yogurt—that’s what I did)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup light brown sugar

Combine all ingredients together.  Chill.  Serve.

Variations

Taffy Apple Dip: Decrease brown sugar to ¾ cup and add ½ cup powdered sugar.

Salted Peanut Apple Dip: Add 1 cup chopped salted peanuts.

Cinnamon Apple Dip:  Add ½ teaspoon cinnamon, or to taste.

Peanut Butter Dip:  Add 1 cup peanut butter and ¼ cup milk.

Family reviews:  Nobody found anything objectionable about any of the dips; however, we did all have our favorites.  Aaron favored the cinnamon, Becky the salted peanut, and I liked the basic best, I think.  I had to try all of them several times and I’m still not completely sure.

Links to related posts:

Cream Cheese Perfection 

Yogurt Fruit Dips  

Jell-O for Food Storage

 

Elephants in the Room

In a seminar Lydia and I attended last month, I was again reminded of “the elephant in the room” idiom.  Just so that we’re all on the same page here, we’ll use the definition provided at WritingTips.org: 

A difficult problem or issue that everyone is aware of but no one wants to discuss or acknowledge.  The problem or issue in question might be ignored because bringing it up would be uncomfortable, inconvenient, embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or even dangerous.[i]

Unfortunately, we don’t just have one elephant in our room; we’ve got a bunch.  When the first elephant panics, it’ll start a stampede, crushing a great many people in our society, quickly or slowly, but smashed dead nonetheless. 

The obvious solution to the problem that we clearly recognize, is to get out of that room.  If only.  There are those setting up house in foreign locations.  I wish them the best, but I just don’t see it working out very well.  History shows us that when the going gets tough, the locals favor picking on the outsiders, especially the wealthy ones.

The other solution is to prepare to hunker down at home.  The first order of business is to identify the threats.  So how many elephants are in the room and what are they?  The elephants include the following, and probably many more:

The health of the American people is fragile not just due to poor diet but also fact that our immune systems have been so sheltered (due to good health care in the past) that we are susceptible to so many diseases—illnesses we, as laypeople, have no idea how to treat. 

Furthermore, all of our medications and medical supplies come from Asia, mostly China.  It boggles my mind that more people are not aware of this.  What percentage of this country could be wiped out?  I’d guess close to 50%. 

The number of deaths from the covid jab continues to escalate.  I’ve never heard of so many new cases of cancer and sudden death in young, apparently healthy people, especially athletes.

We’re being invaded.  Thousands of military age males, young and fit, have entered and continue to enter our country unchallenged.  When these guys get together and go to work, we’re going to be in real trouble.

Our fiat currency is about to become worthless.  There will be no money for buying food, health services, or medications, if they were even available.  There will be no gas.  Corporate America operates on credit.  Without that credit, they can’t get supplies to manufacture and they can’t pay employees. 

And finally, there is the fact that our soil is dead.  By that I mean that the soil on commercial farms in general will not be able to raise a crop without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.  When our currency becomes worthless and when farmers can’t get credit to buy their synthetic fertilizers and herbicides, they will not be able to raise any food.  They will not be able to feed this country.

Having identified the threats, it’s time to take action.  As we head into fall and winter, now’s the time to take inventory and make sure you’ve got the food, medications and other medical supplies, fuel, shelter, etc., and everything else on those lists while they are still available.  With the garden and harvest season winding down, winter is a good time to learn new skills and build better relationships with family and friends.

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[i]  https://writingtips.org/the-elephant-in-the-room/