Apples and Bears, Oh My!

We canned apples this week. Every year when fall rolls around we always can up a couple of cases of apples for the coming winter. We like fried apples on Sunday morning, and we also make applesauce and a little apple butter. We are still pretty well fixed for apple butter, so this years haul is all about fried apples and sauce. We got to try out our new toy gifted to us by Brother Kevin and his family. The apple peeler and slicer was a time saving miracle.

We made about two cases of fried apples, but had to stop when we ran out of jars. We still have about a half bushel of apples left so we will pick up some more jars and get busy next weekend.

On the canned good front, we broke open a quart of our kraut. We were surprised it took this long but we had some leftover brisket and got the idea of reuben sandwiches. We sliced the brisket with the new fangled meat slicer, bacon thin. Then we heated it up in cast iron, melted some swiss cheese and topped it with kraut.

And we smoked a rack of ribs for dinner one night.

On a harvesting note, we got our first chestnut last week and it comes with a story.
When Lawman was a young chirrun, he caught the bus at the intersection of Ribgy and Ellett roads in Cambria. There was an old log home on the corner and it had two large chestnut trees in the back yard. Lawman would climb said trees and pick chestnuts, hoard chestnuts, and generally make a pest of himself to the poor old guy who lived there. So old guy gave Pop two small trees that he started from the chestnuts in his yard and cut down his big trees. He told Pop I could climb in his trees if I wanted to. It took many years, but now Pop's trees are as big as the ones of Lawman's youth. When Lawman built his house, he brought two trees from Pop's chestnuts and planted them in the back yard at The Acre. We got our first nuts this year. Grandchildren to the youth trees from Cambria.

And lastly we had a nature sighting worthy of mention. Lawman put out a couple of trail cameras when the ponds got completed just to see what kind of critters come and go from the new ponds. It captured Lawman on the Silver Hornet taking a break in the shade, then about ten minutes after he rolled out, Yogi blundered by the exact spot. We're not sure if he was waiting for Lawman to leave or if it was just coincidence, but he's lucky there was no pic-a-nic basket in the basket.

We ended the week with tacos, and a nap.
K&K