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.
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