Apples ripen all at about the same time, a blessing but also a dilemma, one good backyard apple tree produces easily over 100 apples. The 20 best and largest ones are for hand eating, half a pound each or more. The next 20 to make 4 apple pies. Another 20 to make 5 quarts of apple sauce for freezing. From your 20 most blemished apples, as well as the peels, cores, and ends from the other apples, you make pints of apple cider. The remaining apples can be sliced and sundried, eaten as a snack or used to make tea. Here is how.

This dish is called “Farmers Daughters”, probably because the fruit makes a smooth and mild tasting dessert, but the liquid develops more alcohol from airborne wild yeasts on the dried fruits.A small piece of brandied apricot is served on special family occasions over ice cream to all eligible younger family members.The flavor of the apricots transfers to the sap over a few months and is then fortified with sugar and brewers yeast, becomes an adults only liqueur, 20% alcohol, 40 proof.

Five days of sun drying will preserve fresh sweet peppers for the whole year, if cut in half before drying.

Go to your local farmers market to find the juiciest peaches available, donut peaches and white peaches are the choice here in California. Peach syrup is a great way to add fresh peach flavor to breakfasts, desserts and for baking in winter. The high sugar content prevents the syrup from turning hard in the freezer, handy to use.#GlobalCookpadGames2024

Our own oranges are organic, store bought oranges can have residual chemicals on the peels. Here is how to wash and dry the peels to make tea. After making the tea, we spread the peels in the garden to repel slugs.#GlobalApron

Run Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apple peels, cores, quartered, blemished and dropped apples in three pound batches through the tabletop press. Three lbs. of apples make a pint of juice. The left over mash is a special treat for the horses. Ten pounds of apples make one pound of apple syrup. Apple syrup is used to make Sauerbraten dishes.

When you sun dry red ripe tomato puree for four days, you get superb tomato paste. If you dont get four continuous days of sun this time of year, dry in oven. No other ingredients added except a teaspoon of seasalt per pint, just dried into paste in the sun on a half size baking pan. Fresh frozen in small quantities, I use empty half eggshells, holding one ounce each, not boiled or canned to keep that summer fresh taste.

This is a foolproof farm method to make green as well as black preserved olives, not salty, from the same fresh green local Sevillano olives, grown right here. We make five buckets of five lbs. each, taste one olive once a month till they develop their flavor over the time span of a year till next October harvest. You can use tall plastic food containers with lids, keep the proportions the same, to make smaller quantities.

Winter stored fresh apples from your own trees, or bought supercheap at the farmers market when there is an abundance, need to be processed before they turn bad in spring. Making syrup is a great way. The syrup is a culinary experience, it is like cooking with honey instead of sugar. You will taste the difference.If you have never made apple syrup before, start with a can of frozen apple juice without sweeteners added, make fresh juice, then simmer till syrupy and taste.

Thirteen hours of sunlight a day left in September, you need four sunny days, no rain, to sun dry your ripe tomatoes. Lay them out in a line pointing to the south.

These are Italian red peppers, also called Carmen peppers, or “bullshorn” peppers. They are as long as my hand, look like a bulls horn. Mild peppers, kids love to snack on them fresh or pickled. Great on salads and in soups. Stays crunchy till next harvest when pickled.

Our plums are starting to ripen, and all at once. Here is how we process the ones we dont eat directly from the tree or give away. We added a Japanese plum wine recipe here and published a separate recipe for Amish plum wine.You can grow plum trees from ripe pits: scrub the pits, put in bowl of water, discard the floating ones, plant three pits in one planter hole in a large cloth planter pot with handles or in a planter bed in a sunny location.Plant in fall, they need winter cold to germinate. They will sprout in spring. Select the most vigorous one, remove other two.Drag planter pot around till you find a sunny location where the young plum tree flourishes.#GlobalApron