Apples!

Apples are everywhere this time of year. Actually, in the Boston area, we’ve gotten a little beyond picking season, but you can still find a lot of fresh, local fruit (don’t take this for granted, though– some of the apples at my local grocery store are from New Zealand!).

Last week, I sent a box of Harvard Common Press books to my friend and fellow Wesleyan alum, Megan, who runs a great food blog called Runner’s Kitchen. If you are at all into running, food, nutrition, or food products, you should definitely check out the site. Anyway, yesterday Megan made the Low Sugar Apple Butter recipe from Linda Ziedrich’s tome, The Joy of Jams, Jellies and Other Sweet Preserves. You may remember this book from an earlier post that I wrote about my experiences making strawberry-rhubarb jam. It sounds like the process was worth the time and sticky dishes!

In her post, Megan explains that a lot of her friends don’t quite understand why she spends so much time in her kitchen after work. Her collections are of mason jars rather than shoes or accessories. I understand completely. And, I’m sure that some of you, if you took the plunge and started canning, might re-prioritize, if you haven’t already. Preserving, especially without artificial pectin (all of Linda’s recipes forgo it), fits logically into the local food movement. Whether we’re getting our food straight from a farm, through a CSA, in the Co-Op, or at the local grocery store, the process of preserving those otherwise-perishable ingredients facilitates year-round local eating that would otherwise be more difficult in the Nothern United States. While jamming is fun, so is pickling (for that, you can check out Linda’s other tome, The Joy of Pickling, which is now in a Revised Edition).

I had actually planned to make the same apple butter recipe when I went out to visit Russell Orchards a few weeks ago to pick apples and sample their cider donuts, which were featured on Serious Eats recently.

I made an apple crisp with the apples I brought home and another friend of mine made this great looking apple pie. I guess pie (and especially crisp)-making is not as much of a process as apple butter, but it does have a similarly satisfying result.

If you’re interested in reviewing Harvard Common Press books for your blog, send me an email at matt @ eatwithme.com and I’ll send you a few.