My New Apple Peeler

How's that for a stimulating title?

I had never been anywhere to pick apples, except the local Stop and Shop, and now that I'm a professional canner, I plan to can lots of applesauce while the apples are still brand new.

Thus, my master plan to go to an orchard and pick apples since it's September in New England and that's what I'm supposed to do.  Then I'm going to come home and make a million jars of applesauce.

On Sunday, k-ster, my sister e-ster and her crew all went apple picking.  According to her, it was only a half hour from her house.  And it was, plus about another half hour more.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I pictured lots of rows of trees with people standing guard to make sure you didn't take more than your fair share or harm the trees.  I was pretty surprised when it was all independent and no one cared what you did as long as you didn't cross the yellow ropes.  Which people did anyway to sneak a few apples.

I wanted to know which types of apples I was picking, but there were no signs.  Just lots of red apples, red and green apples and greenish apples.  All kinds of sizes.

And this guy, picking some apples like he was a professional or something.  Height had its advantages, but I still got plenty even at my own 5'2.5" level.

When all was picked and bagged, k-ster and I had 42 pounds of apples.  A bushel is 48.  That's a lot of apples.   But, the recipes say it takes 21 pounds of apples to make 7 quarts of applesauce, so I don't think that's soooooo many.

And I made a pie already, so that's a couple of pounds less.  And I might just eat a few before I can get to canning them.

But here's the real reason I brought you here today:

I have no idea what this brand of apple peeler/corer is, but it's so cool!  I looked online and they all seemed to be between $14-$20, so I got the $14 one on amazon.com  It took ruining one apple to figure it all out.

I had no idea that this little magic was going to happen.  I was shocked after the first apple went through and was like a slinky!  I just cut the stack in quarters and used them in my pie.

The peeler makes these cool stringy peels that most of the time were all one long string from one apple.

After the pie went in the oven, I had to see if I could also peel potatoes with this thing.  I have made mashed potatoes maybe 5 times in my life.  I just don't care about doing things with potatoes and don't buy them very often.  I mostly just make potato salad and I don't peel the potatoes.

I didn't get any pictures, but it peeled the potatoes just as nicely, so I made some mashed potatoes for supper.  K-ster was surprised.

Along with apples, the farm had lots of other produce growing, and of course, a pumpkin field.  You could just take one of their picked pumpkins, or you could go out in the field on the hay ride for $2.25 and "pick" one.  K-ster and I were not interested.

And yet, someone forked over the cash and off we went.  Since I had my very own homegrown pumpkin, I didn't need to buy one.  But this one right here bribed me with being able to pick my own corn when we got out in the field.

The kid driving the tractor wasn't sure about picking corn, and no one else was, and I didn't feel like getting arrested in the middle of a cornfield, so I skipped it.

Did I mention the VERY hot day that it was?  We've had a lot of rainy days and Sunday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy.  But then the sun came out.  And we were meeeeeeelting.

So, big plans for the weekend include a lot of applesauce being made and processed.  Maybe I'll be really good and get a batch going in the slowcooker and be ahead of myself.

Then we're on to cranberry sauce because k-ster has access to as many free cranberries as I want he wants.