Can you BELIEVE that it is mid-October? Can you believe that October is MORE than half over? Me either. It feels like school just started and then - whoooooosh - here we are.
What's been going on for lunches around here? Same old, same old. The kids are still coming home and eating the same exact lunches that they have for years - bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter - and I'm still packing the same rotation of snacks for them to take to school: cookies, loaves, muffins with fruit or veggies on the side. If it's not broke...
The one fruit I never pack for school snack is the one fruit I always had as a child, and that is the much-loved and celebrated apple. Whole apples are hard for my kids to eat due to chronically loose teeth and time constraints, and sliced apples are just too BROWN. I know, I know, if I sprinkled them with lemon juice they would be fine, but I'm more of a "well, you can eat them after school" kind of mom. I'll happily bake everything from scratch, but apparently lemon juice on apple slices is just too much for me to handle.
It's too bad they don't have apples at school because I currently have sixty pounds of apples in my cold storage right now, along with forty pounds of Concord grapes. I just got back from Thanksgiving at the in-laws', where fall means fruit, beautiful, quality fruit. We're all enjoying the fresh flavours, but the time to enjoy the grapes is limited, and I have a plan.
Remember my not-so-secret love of fruit leather? Remember how my husband romanced me by buying me a food dehydrator? Do you see where this is going? HOMEMADE GRAPE AND APPLE FRUIT LEATHER. I see the future and it is going to be all dehydrating, all the time, at least for the weekend. I haven't quite figured out the measurements yet...and I haven't quite figured out how to make the leather thick and chewy rather than thin and roll-up like, but it's all part of the experience. As someone at Blissdom Canada said a few weeks ago, I CAN DO ANYTHING IF I BELIEVE I CAN. Well, I probably can't become a professional athlete or a supermodel or someone who has to work with small children, but I am pretty sure I CAN make fruit leather.
Stay tuned - I will let you know how it turns out! In the meantime, I'm going to go eat some more Concords and stock up on teeth whitening strips.
You diabolical fruit-dehydrating genius! :)
ReplyDeleteI don't like putting lemon on sliced apples because then they taste like...well...lemon. Here is my trick for disguising the brown, which I came up with when my youngest was in kindergarten: cinnamon. I just sprinkle a little over them, put the lid on the container and shake 'em all around. Then they look brown, but it's OKAY because CINNAMON IS BROWN.
See what I did there? Brilliant.
You could put sugar in with the cinnamon but I think apples are sweet enough. My kids love apples and cinnamon now. Classical conditioning, baby.
I have not been fond of apples since the time I bit into one and my front tooth cracked. My dentist tells me that apples are often the culprit with this particular problem and therefore they should be sliced instead of just eaten. you say you are too lazy to do the lemon thing. I am too lazy to do the slicing thing, although I will patiently peel an orange...
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