Tis the season...

for foraging and preservation. Here are some photos of our labors.

This is high bush cranberry sauce in the making. We harvested the berries with my herbal group. Then I took off the stems and boiled them til they were mashable. This is them going through the food mill. If we had a more heavy duty mill, we could have skipped the boiling step.

This sauce is SOUR! We add a tablespoon to a couple servings of applesauce for a hint of flavor without making it unpalatable.

We also harvested hazelnuts during the herbal apprenticeship. It took hours to get them all out of their shells. 

We added some peanuts and hickory nuts to make Linda's homemade seaweed,syrup, and nut bars. They are a bit too sweet for me, but neal loves them. I may substitute peanut butter for some of the syrup next time. Anyone have other suggestions. Linda's recipe is on her website: http://www.moonwiseherbs.com/trees-as-food-and-medicine/

Neal took on apple butter as his project. We ended up with 18 pints. Some slightly sweetened and some left tart.

Beautiful, right?

We made "meatloaf cupcakes" with sweet potato "frosting". Omg it was so delicious. Here is the website for that recipe: http://wellnessmama.com/4759/meatloaf-cupcakes/

The current project is apple leather. We skipped the lemon juice in the usual recipes because that is just for preventing browning. We also ditched the sugar. This leather is plenty sweet on its own and I don't want it to be any closer to a dessert than it already is. 

We have batches going in the dehydrator and oven. We will try storing the leather at room temp, in the fridge, and in the freezer to compare how well they last and texture.

An apple a day... For the next 3 years

We have so many apples right now!! It's the year of the apple, the apple moon, the apple village, or something along those lines! We got 1.5 bushels for $7 on Craigslist, 2 bushels from some new friends, and then probably 2 to 3 more bushels from a friend who let us use his cider press and apple orchard (that is in addition to 10 gallons of fresh cider we took home. We have given away 3.5 gallons to friends and family and will probably freeze the rest of it. We are grateful of all the generosity we have been shown these last few weeks. So many apples! Here are some pics of the bounty and our preservation efforts.

Check out all the apples. We did apple sauce in the crockpot... We will be stepping up our game by using Catherine's Nesco next time!

4 trays in the dehydrator. Half peeled and half not. We will see which win the taste test. If it is close, we will do peels-on in the future because it is easier.

This batch started off in the sun oven, but then it got cloudy. The regular oven is faster anyway.

This batch was done exclusively in the regular oven. It is the fastest method by far.

Some of the cider crowding up the fridge. Hehe.

Neal is experimenting with inoculating the cider with lactobacillus. We are hoping for vinegar based on Greg's recommendations.