When Good Food Goes Bad Part VI: Apples

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I hail from The Apple Capital of the World, so I know a thing or two about apples. For instance, eating three apples a day helps you lose weight.

That is, if you can manage to eat three apples a day. As somone who really loves apples, I can attest that apple fatigue is REALLY easy to come by.

My mother, in addition to supplying my Peeps habit, is my apple dealer. OK, apple-giver. When she comes to visit, she brings me bags of apples from the warehouses of our hometown, where apples are much, much cheaper and can be purchased directly from growers. And I eat at least an apple a day, and it's true that I do feel better and get sick less when I keep up the "at least one per day" regimen. I still go see my doctor, though, because he is incredibly handsome.

Anyway, I recently found myself, through a chain of events that is far too boring to recount here, to be the recipient of at least three bags of apples. Even eating three a day, I wasn't getting anywhere. My newly-restarted veggie and fruit deilvery service delivered another bag, and my fridge was starting to look like the apple warehouses back home.

So, apples: I tend to make apple sauce and apple tarts, just so I can get my fix. The apple sauce still falls within the realm of healthy eating - the tart, alas, counteracts most of the goodness brought by the apples. And of course, the BEST way to eat an apple is raw. But if you've got too many and you're worried about one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch, here are a couple recipes to help you prevent waste and eat happily.

Apple-Berry-Sauce

The great thing about apple sauce is that you cook it and mash it up quite a bit, the result being that you can't really tell what was in there before. Any kind of apple will do. I also throw in other fruit that is looked threatening aged. Tonight, for example, my apple-fruit sauce consisted of three Granny Smith apples, five pink lady apples, one mango, a bag of organic blueberries, the juice from one orange that was starting to mold on th outside, and one Fuji apple for good luck. I don't add any sugar to my apple sauces, because I like them a little tart, and there's enough sugar in fruit as it is - but that's really up to you.

Ingredients:

  • Bunch of fruit, sliced into large chunks, rinsed
  • Water

Directions

Throw about 1/2 cup of water in a big pot. Boil, add fruit, boil for 10 minutes, then cook on low for about an hour or until everything is mushy. Smash with a potato masher or blend in a food processor. Add sugar (or Stevia, or Splenda) to taste with each individual serving.

Fruit Tart

Because I'm diabetic, I can't have lots of pastries. So I compromise by making the apple tart without the tart.

Ingredients:

  • Lots of apples and pears (peeled or unpeeled, enough to more or less fill a baking dish), sliced thin (I bought a mandoline to do this)
  • Additional fruit (optional)
  • Brown sugar
  • Kosher salt
  • Half stick melted butter or margarine
  • Chopped nuts of your choice
  • Wheat germ (optional)

Directions:

Layer the apple and pear slices in a thin layer at the bottom of a large greased baking pan. Drizzle melted butter on top, then sprinkle with chopped nuts and wheatgerm. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used up. Every third later, sprinkle an eensy bit of salt.

Cover with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees until the volume has decreased by about half. Uncover, turn off heat, but leave the pan in the oven to brown the top lightly. You can broil it if you wish to get a more crispy top. Slice and eat. REALLY good with ice cream.

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Guest's picture
Stephanie

Those are great ideas! I make an apple prune compote and it lasts forever in the fridge - it's great on yogurt or oatmeal, with cheese plates, as a side to a meaty dinner, and so on. I don't have the recipe with me now, but it involves baking about six apples and a bunch o prunes with brown sugar and water in a dutch oven for a couple of hours.

Jessica Okon's picture

My cousins &  I used to make these scary shrunken apple heads when I was a kid.

Guest's picture
Foodie

I have also been the recipient of Too Many Apples. Here's a few more ideas:

If you do a roast of some sort (chicken and pork work well with this), throw some peeled, cored, and quartered apples in with your other veggies. Put them in during the last half hour or so of cooking so they don't go to mush.

There's a few recipes floating around for apple cake, made with chopped apples in the mix. However, applesauce is also a respectable fat replacer for cake mixes (chocolate covers up the apple flavor just fine) or in quick breads, like zucchini or nut.

Myscha Theriault's picture

Hi Andrea.

I like that the last comment dealt with pork and chicken . . . apple sauce is a great condiment to have with meats, particularly those two.

Also, if you like it tart, crab apple sauce can be a way to go. It can also make for a denser sauce which keeps things from being to wet when you use it as a fat substitute in baking. If you can it in smaller amounts, you can also have it available that way for baking each week throughout the cooler months.

Also, you can save your cores and peels in smaller bags in the freezer (if you have the room, otherwise just do it after you core and peel them). When you want a quick little bit of free yummy aromatherapy, just toss them in a little mini-crock with some cinnamon and water. Smells great!

Love the shrunken apple face. Great post.

Guest's picture
Guest

Hi Andrea,

My husband and I also grew up in the Apple Capital, and a few weeks ago we went to my parent's orchard for an apple cider party. Besides coming home with 4 gallons of fresh apple cider (the most delicious juice I have ever tasted), we also brought home a huge box of fresh apples.

Besides preparing the usual apple recipes, we have been drying a ton of apples. Dried apples are easy to prepare, keep for a long time, can be rehydrated for use in recipes, and are an excellent snack. We have also had a lot of luck drying cherries, peaches, and nectarines over this past summer.

Andrea Karim's picture

Ah, the apple cider parties. We used to do that with a group of five or six other families. It was really fun, but you had to have an apple press to get the good stuff. I was JUST telling a friend about that recently! He's from SoCal, so it was news to him that people could still make their own juice.

My dad was a big fan of drying. I've just never had the room to keep a drier- but that's a great suggestion.