Comments on: How d’ye like them apples?

By: Trudy

Trudy — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:52:18 +0000

I am teaching in Guatemala right now, and here in some regions they eat clover or shamrocks (not sure if both names are for the same weed?). They mince it finely and mix it with lime or lemon juice, salt and a little garlic. It’s eaten as a veggie side dish, like you would spinach maybe, but I like it as a spread. Delicious! They also roast a kind of giant ant that tastes like peanuts, which I am sure would gross out most people in the US. But it wasn’t bad. I was in a situation in which refusing would have seemed rude, I thought, so I went ahead and tried it and to my surprise, wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:58:12 +0000

I’m just as lazy a cook as you are, wini. I almost never peel an apple–I think skins give the pies character, and I use a food mill to process the applesauce, which removes the skins for me. And they enrich the compost, finally!

By: wini

wini — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:36:06 +0000

Our heirloom tree is a mature pecan tree, which blessed us with 40 pounds of pecans 2 Autumns ago. It appears that the drought has eliminated this year’s crop, alas. I love, love this kind of found food, and I also think of Laura and her sisters when cultivating my little garden. Here you see people collecting pecans on sidewalks, lawns, and parking lots, and we used to go out in the mornings and make sure we got all the ones from the street in front of our house just to make sure the dog and baby walkers didn’t get too many free snacks from us.

Because pecans are a huge pain to shell, at least mine are, I think you should focus on apple recipes that do not require much peeling. Coring and drying. Pies with skins on. Things like that…

By: cgeye

cgeye — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:19:49 +0000

http://www.foodinjars.com/recipe-index/

And this fall’s driving me crazee, with the neighbors letting their fruit drop on the ground — in CO, this broad will take ‘em off your hands:

http://www.5280.com/blogs/2012/09/05/get-involved-donate-your-fruit-surplus-local-jam-maker

… and these gleaners will donate a portion of their harvest to Project Angel Heart:

http://www.historycolorado.org/news-room/call-submissions-fruit-trees-and-vines-gleaning-denver-project

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:25:12 +0000

. . . but I guess it’s only funny until someone loses a PIE! (Rimshot!)

Thankyew. Thankyewverramuch.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:25:07 +0000

Ha-ha! I like the idea of having pie-swiping hobos in my neighborhood.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:07:49 +0000

Historiann, if you’d put one of those pies to cool on a windowsill, I’ll hop a freight car at the end of my street (*one* of my streets) and ride out there to personally re-enact one of the great American cartoon and movie tropes about free food; to wit, the hobo tiptoeing across the yard to grab a pie and then hightailing it back toward the freight yard with the one-eyed farm dog in enthusiastic pursuit. (I guess it would be a little too much to suggest heavy-on-the-cinnamon on a medium-brown crust, wouldn’t it?). But a small jug of hard cider would speed my way back east!

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:43:55 +0000

Great tip, quixote! Now, I know. (But I don’t see them in Colorado for some reason–they may be a phenomenon of a lower altitude and/or a wetter climate.)

By: anonymous

anonymous — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:43:31 +0000

Ditto to the Little House, eating wild carrots and berries, and even the lemony clover (wood sorrel). There was also spring near our house that grew watercress (wish I still had that!) and we learned how to make “Indian lemonade” out of sumac (but only if an adult verified that we had really found sumac, not another poison berry).

No good apple stories, though, because I associate them with work, not play. But homemade applesauce is great warm with cinnamon on top of vanilla ice cream.

By: quixote

quixote — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:35:38 +0000

Damn. Now I’m hungry.

Note of caution about the wild carrots. Some of them are, and some plants that look fairly similar are wild hemlock, the plant whose claim to fame is killing Socrates. It has noticeably spotted stems. (Hence the Latin name, Conium maculatum.) If your “wild carrot” has spotted stems, don’t eat!.