Apples

I feel like we have already done so much, I hope I still have enough ideas and activities for the rest of the month!

We made apple "puppets." You are supposed to stick your finger in the hole and your finger is the "worm." Joshua decided just to draw his worms on the apple. He designed his own apple, while Abigail just chose her own colors for the apple I designed for her.

She get's really excited any time I let her use Kinderschere

two little worms

We made apple trees using our thumbs and an ink pad to put the apples on the tree. We started out with just red ink and just the letters for Apfelbaum (apple tree) but... we got a little creative after that, as you can see.

We went to die grosse rote Scheune (the big red barn) to do some apple sampling. Yum. Joshua and Abigail rated their apples on their clipboards. This was a fun activity, even if everyone else there thought we were ridiculous. The barn is about 30 minutes away - but even though we were only there for about 30 minutes, it was a fun trip. We had a lot of things to talk about. Not all apples look the same or taste the same, but they are all still apples. I linked this to how not all people look the same or are the same, but we are all still children of God. We talked about the process of apples starting on the trees, being picked, boxed, sorted, stored, and sold to stores where we buy them. The kids got to pick their favorite apple and I bought it for them - 50 cents an apple. That sounds outrageous, but I realized the next day at Costco, that Costco sells their apples for something like 55 cents and they aren't as good. 

This barn is under new ownership/management? And so it is quite a bit different than what I remember from 2 years ago. It is still really cute inside but they cater just as much to ice cream eaters as they do to produce buyers.

Taste testing: Ginger Gold, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Fuji, and Gala. Come on, people! What about all those other gazillion apple varieties that I've never tasted?!? There are over 7500 varieties of Apple out there. I want to taste those!!

Joshua taking his job very seriously

And the winner is... uh... I guess the Fuji has the biggest smiley. It way my favorite, anyway.

The apple wall in the cooler room.

Joshua and Abigail both picked a Fuji and enjoyed a sample of fresh apple juice

Pretending to pick their apples off the baby apple trees. I didn't let them walk up to the orchards with mature trees filled with apples because I didn't want anyone to think we were stealing them... plus it's private property.

The barn is right next to this processing center which prompted the discussion of how apples get from the tree to our table - seeing as we have no tree of our own - otherwise the discussion would have been very short indeed.

She's just cute. We love her.

I wasn't willing to spend $31 on 3/4 of a bushel of apples at the big red barn, so we went to the Allred Orchards fruit stand in Provo the next day and bought these beauties for $15 a half bushel.

Gala Apples

We made an apple pie!! This was my first pie that actually tasted good... the pies of Thanksgiving 2004, mmm, not that great. I always thought baking pies was an outrageously time consuming and aggravating task - until I realized I grew up with people who actually made their own crust from scratch. Walmart - again, my love/hate relationship.

I started out using my grandma's handy (old) Apple Mate, used to core, slice, and peel apples perfectly and effortlessly. However, on the 5th apple, it stopped peeling, and that is when I noticed the metal had actually broken in two and the peeler was lying helplessly on the cutter board. So we chucked it in the trash - the peeler, not the whole Apple Mate - and used the good old hand peeler.

My not-so-secret secret to a no-tantrum pie making experience

Derek had a good idea to sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top. It kind of looks funny, but it was mighty tasty. Next time I think I will mix the cinnamon and sugar with egg white and brush it on the crust. It might look nicer that way.

Yummy

We made apple pancakes. We started with a recipe I found online that included only apples and eggs - but I think they forgot to add like 4 steps to the instructions because the "pancakes" were ridiculously awful. I threw in flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, and sugar and saved the day. Yea me!

I already know how I'm going to improve these next time, too. A little more cinnamon and sugar in the batter and some fresh apple butter on top!!

And here are some of our books from the Apples Story Kit at the library. They might have been more accurate in naming it the Apple Pie Story Kit. I got the apple pie recipe from "the Apple Pie Tree" and there is an apple cake recipe in "Apple Farmer Annie" that looks really good, but I think I can do Apple cider and Applesauce on my own. Stay tuned for more apple treats.