It's busy again this morning,
hey Vanessa? Always busy. Ha ha ha!
Yeah? Yes. So we have
some wonderful clear apples here.
They are also called transparents.
And they were given to us by a friends
who don't use their tree.
So their tree is organic.
They just grow like that. Wonderful.
And so they are called clear apples,
but they're also called transparent apples.
And they are the first ones of the season.
They, usually, July,
by beginning of August,
they are ready to pick.
So, we had about a hundred and fifty pounds here.
Yesterday I finished seventy-five pounds.
Today we have another seventy-five pounds,
we have more over there, to finish.
Now, what we are going to do with these apples.
First of all, here we have the apple peel.
I rinse them off first always. Yeah.
The apple peel, I want to show you
what we do with that. Okay. Apple peel
and the core, and you always have to
open them up, because they may have some worms,
and that you have to discard.
So we take the core out, right,
like this. Take this out, and this, and this.
Now these apples here,
before I tell you about the core,
these ones here, we put in a pot,
tiny little bit of water, so they don't burn.
Whole bunch of them in a big pot,
and make apple sauce.
I see you've got lots of them. And you
don't need a recipe for applesauce.
You just cook the apples
until they are soft.
I take a huge whisk, and just whisk it through.
Or you can put it through your blender,
whatever you want to do.
And then you add honey. I add honey.
I don't add sugar.
I like local wonderful organic honey to it.
And then I add a little bit
of my own gingerbread spice,
but you can also add just a little cinnamon.
And all you do, is you do that to taste.
And then you can them,
warm water bath is fine.
You don't need to pressure can them.
And here you have
amazing amazing applesauce, right. Oh.
Organic. Wonderful. So that's
one of the things I do with the apples. So, the
clear apple is not really sweet though,
so now the applesauce is sweet though right? It's a tart apple. Yeah.
It's very good, also, for apple strudel.
Yeah. So what we do with part of it.
Mm hm. We cut the apples like this,
and then we slice them like this.
And I toss them a little bit in lemon juice.
I have a big bowl,
put a little bit of lemon juice,
and constantly toss the apples,
so they don't get too brown,
and then I put them in a freezer bag
like this, mark it. Yeah.
And this one is enough for one strudel.
Or a pie. And we have. Or a pie, yep.
So we have quite, so this is the
second part of what you use the apples for.
The third part are the peels, and the cores.
And if you like to come over here,
what we do here,
we have two containers here,
as you can see. One is here,
this here could use a little more
purified water. We'll just put them in a,
this is a food grade pail.
I didn't have enough in the crock. Mm hm.
This is, of course, also food grade pail,
the water in there. And then we
add some honey to this. I put probably
a cup and a half of honey in each one of them.
The big crock, yeah. Purified water,
and I just found a little bit of it,
but I had a whole cake
of mother of vinegar,
which is the substance that sets itself
on the bottom of a vinegar bottle. Mm hm.
And it actually produces more vinegar,
right. Okay. And you need the sugar,
the honey in it, to speed it up.
So, this here came out of here,
but I have about a whole cake like that,
halved it, put half in here, half in here.
And then what you do, is you cover it up.
So, you're fermenting this
like sauerkraut a bit, right? This is a fermentation.
You make your own vinegar. But you've added water though, right? Yeah,
you add, yeah of course,
you have to cover it with water.
Like I have much more to go into this.
Yeah. But what I will,
and I'm glad you're saying something.
What I will do, eventually,
I will take a big plate,
put it upside-down in here,
just to submerse all the apple pieces. Yeah.
You just have to go like this,
just to make sure they are submersed.
And then I will take a wet, a damp towel,
and make sure it always stays damp.
Right now, it's not damp, but you know,
you get the idea.
And you need the air flow,
but you don't want to have
the fruit flies in here. Right.
And you just let it sit in the kitchen.
Watch it everyday, stir it a little bit,
make sure the apples don't come
around here too much,
because then this here will go foul.
They will not ferment. They will go foul.
Same like the sauerkraut right.
And what does it end up to be?
That's going to be apple cider vinegar. Okay.
Your own organic apple cider vinegar. Yeah.
And you just taste it after a while.
See how strong it is, how you like it.
Strain it, fill it into bottles. Very nice.
Okay. Now, I have another way of using
the apples. And what I do is there are
tiny apples, like these ones. Yeah.
And they are very green,
like they are almost unripe green. Right.
So I take these, and yeah, these little ones,
all the little ones. And what I do with them,
is I cut them in half, and quarter them,
because, see here for instance,
there is a little worm hole.
So, you don't want the worms in there.
This goes in the compost.
This goes in your compost.
All the leftovers here go in the compost.
This too, this too. And these ones
go into a pot with a little water,
just to cover it with water,
and cook them until they are totally soft,
and simmer them for a little bit.
And then you strain it out,
and then you get a liquid like this here,
see, like this here.
And this is very concentrated apple juice.
It's full of pectin. Okay. And because,
why it is full of pectin,
because the apples are green,
and green apples have the most pectin.
Okay. Right. And what I'll do with this,
I'll make apple jelly. Apple jelly. Apple jelly.
Yeah. So, out of, just to summarize
the whole thing, out of this harvest of apples.
Yeah. Oh, what I also wanted to tell you,
for the apple cider. Yeah.
These yellow parts here,
not the rotten parts,
but these little yellow parts
go into the apple cider vinegar. Okay.
They speed that up too. Okay. Right. Yeah.
So, out of this you get applesauce. Yep.
You get apples for your pies and strudels.
You get your own homemade apple cider vinegar.
We probably get two gallons out of this,
one gallon out of each. Yeah.
And you also have, of the little tiny apples,
where people think, oh we'll just discard them,
we'll throw them in the garbage, right. Yeah.
You get your pectin, your apple pectin.
You could also cook this down to about half.
Mm hm. And can it in little jars,
and use it as your own pectin
to make other jams. Okay, yeah.
Right, so you don't have to buy
your pectin. Right. Right. Yeah.
And then you also have the leftover apples
go in your compost. Yeah.
So, you use every part of the apple. Everything
is used. Yeah. Okay.
And this is the beauty of this.
It's wonderful. That you get so many products
out of a harvest of apples. Yeah. Okay? Okay.
Thank you Vanessa. Thank you.
Thank you. That's wonderful cooking class.
Thank you. Okay.
Closed Captioning by Kris Brandhagen. brandhagen@gmail.com