Dried Apples

The Sailor arrived home this weekend and as soon as he walked into the apartment, he immediately noticed the enormous quantity of apples, apples and more apples, adorning the table. 

I remembered I wanted to do something with all of those apples... 

I made an apple cake, but that barely made a dent in one of the bowls. 

I needed another solution before these fantastically fresh apples straight from the orchard would start rotting. 

A few years ago, my mom and I were out shopping, and she bought me a food dehydrator on a whim. I had mentioned that I wanted to experiment with beef jerky for the Sailor. The jerky process still needs some work. (In the meantime, the Sailor has built his own contraption to make South African biltong that I promise to feature later.)

In any case, we seemed to go through dried fruit like crazy in our house and I figured there must be a cheaper way to keep it in stock. I also didn't like that a lot of dried food products contained a ton of preservatives. 

I wanted to keep things simple, even if it meant we had to eat the dried stuff faster than the purchased preserved kind. Over the years, I've experimented on a lot of fruit, but apples are some of the fastest and easiest to dehydrate.

I simply core them, peel them by hand, slice them fairly thin, and then give them a good dip in lemon water to help preserve them. 

Sometimes my timing isn't great. I got a little over ambitious this time and I cored a dozen apples before I started peeling them. I'm a fairly fast peeler, but the cores were already turning brown in the meantime before I could get them in the lemon water. 

Make sure you also get cut off any bruised bits. 

You don't have to peel them in any case. It's perfectly acceptable to leave apple skins on the apples. Unless you don't like apple skins. I do like apple skins though, so I'm not sure why I've always peeled them when dehydrating. (I'm thinking the Sailor had a say in the process at some point...) 

Then, I let them dry out in the dehydrator. It usually takes about five hours depending on the type of apple and thickness, until they're the right consistency. If I'm ever in doubt about whether they've dried out enough, I just keep the stash in the fridge (many dried fruits in packages advise you to store the stuff in the fridge after opening in any case!) 

Cost-wise, I have calculated that it is usually cheaper to dry out my own stuff, depending on where and when I buy the fruit. In this case, it worked out about the same price -- but I can eat my dehydrated apples knowing they came straight off the tree and were dried out with only lemon water as an additive.

Plus, how fun is it to just watch fruit shrivel up in a matter of hours? 

If you don't have a dehydrator, you can get the same effects as one by simply using your oven on a very low temperature. You'll need to experiment as to how long it takes -- best done on a day where you don't have to leave the house! 

* I have this dehydrator. It was definitely on sale when my mom and I found it. I'm sure that's why it got purchased on a whim. I liked this one because you can purchase more racks to dehydrate more food at one time.

Butter Dish Winner

Thank you to everyone who celebrated my one-year blogiversary with me by entering the Everything's Better with a Butter Dish Giveaway! Thank you also for your kind comments -- I wish I had 40 plus butter dishes to send to you all! 

Everyone had a fair chance... the names were added to a Butterfly Gold Pyrex bowl and then mixed up before I closed my eyes and grabbed a name.  

(Do you like the evidence of my first ever hand-knit sweater in the photo?
It's COLD here today.)  

And the winner is:

Sue
(the eighth comment from the top)
who wrote:

"I've just discovered these pyrex blogs and it's renewed my interest in them. Thank you. Would love to win a butter dish. Have never seen one before."

Sue, you just won yourself this delightful butter dish!

Send me an email: TypingSunflowers (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and I'll send this beauty off to you ASAP.*

Thanks again to everyone for making my blogiversary a fun one! 

Here's to another 12 months of dreaming, inspiring and creating.  

(*The winner has two weeks from the date of the announcement to contact me for their prize. If I don't hear from the winner within two weeks, they forfeit their prize and I will draw another name at random.)

apples, apples, apples

Nothing signifies the change in season more to me than getting apples directly from an orchard. Call me old-fashioned, but it's true. They might be the same apples that the grocery store sells under 'local food', but at least once a year I need to symbolically purchase them directly from the orchard itself to kick off my own fall festivities. 

I don't even need to pick them myself. I just need to smell the apples, the cider and to see all of the apple goodness in one place. 
 

A few sunflowers never hurt, either. 

Don't forget to leave a comment on this post for your chance to win the Pyrex Butterfly Gold Butter Dish above! The giveaway ends tonight, October 24 at 23:59 EST. 

In the meantime, I have some apples that need my attention. 

Sugar Cookies for Fall

I had a hard time getting into Fall when the temperatures were still reaching 80 even a week ago. Yesterday, after waking up to 50 degrees, I dug my sweaters and slippers out of hiding; autumnal weather has certainly arrived. 

And with cooler weather, baking season also kicks off! I think sometimes Christmas gets all of the glory for cookie season. I say start early... everyone likes a little (or giant) cookie to go with their hot apple cider in chilly weather.

I wanted to test out the neat leaf cookie cutter I found earlier in the year, plus I had a friend visiting, but really do you ever need an excuse to bake cookies?

If you want to make your own sugar cookie cutouts, here's a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. I used a different one that called for both shortening and butter. (The BHG recipe only calls for butter.) In the end, I simply substituded even more butter for the shortening, so my result was very similar to the BHG recipe. 

Icing of course is optional, but with the leaves turning beautiful shades outside, I didn't think the cookies needed much decorating. 

 
Speaking of butter... don't forget to enter the Everything's Better with a Butter Dish Giveaway if you haven't already!

Everything's Better with a Butterdish and a Happy One-Year Blogiversary!

When I started this blog one year ago, I had no idea how much fun I'd have with it. Despite this being one of the most stressful, insanely difficult years of my life (and believe me, I've had some doozies in these past few decades...) this blog has been a constant source of fun, inspiration and community for the past 12 months. 

I've always liked the phrase in my blog header: 'dream, inspire, create'. I don't know when I first started using it as a life mantra -- I think it may have been when the Sailor bought me an iPod mini (remember those?) and I wanted my name and a quote engraved on the back of it. Since then, I have always carried those three words with me in some form or another. 

You can interpret the three words any way you like, but here's how I tend to think of them: 

DREAM: In college, a professor once told us to make a list of goals -- both short-term and long-term -- things that seemed attainable in days, weeks, months, even years. Then he told us to add a third column of 'dreams' -- the stuff that seemed completely impossible -- even absurd. As I mentioned in this post, a decade after college, I was astounded to realize that nearly everything that I wrote in my dream column had actually happened. It wasn't small stuff either -- the list included huge events that I dreamed about but never thought would actually happen: moving overseas, working for a magazine. Since then, I continue to dream, daily. Life often surprises us when we let it. Never stop dreaming. 

INSPIRE: I like to look for inspiration in ordinary things -- whether it's knitting needles, or by simply watching the weather. I started this blog knowing that I needed to share that same inspiration. Hopefully people can take a little of that inspiration with them after they visit here!

CREATE: I feel a little lost if I don't create something every day. I write more about that here, but it could be something as simple as making soup from scratch, or completing one row on a crochet project.  

Maybe some of you are dreaming of adding to your vintage Pyrex collection? 

If so, this could be your chance! 

To celebrate my First Year Blogiversary*, 

I'm giving away a Vintage Pyrex Butterfly Gold Butter Dish.  

If you missed the Great Gravy Boat Giveaway and didn't win, this could be your day!

All you have to do is leave a comment below and you're automatically entered to win the butter dish. I'll draw the winner randomly and I will ship worldwide, because I believe everyone deserves a chance to own a piece of precious Pyrex. 

So take a chance! Leave a comment below -- this time with which piece of Pyrex you need to complete your 'collection'. (If you're not collecting, or you're new to this Pyrex craze, you're welcome too! Just leave a comment and say hello.)

Giveaway closes at 23:59 EST October 24, 2013. Winner will be chosen at random and announced on this blog on October 25, 2013. No purchase necessary. The winner has two weeks from the date of the announcement to contact me for their prize. If I don't hear from the winner within the two weeks, they forfeit their prize and I will draw another name at random. Void where prohibited by law. 

* My official blogiversary is October 18th, but I was so excited to celebrate, I had to post this early.  

*** THIS GIVEWAY IS NOW CLOSED. SEE THE WINNER HERE. ***