In our neck of the woods, apples have just started coming into season. Since our family is working more toward eating in-season foods, and away from buying foods when they’re not in season, we stock up on produce whenever we can.
Whether you grow them, pick them yourself, or buy them from the orchard, local farmers market, produce stand, or store, it’s more economical and healthier to buy apples in the fall and store them.
The storage options are almost endless, but here are some ideas to get you going:
1. Buy “keeper” apples for long-term storage. We did this last year with Arkansas blacks
2. Can them
3. Freeze them; dry packing allows you to freeze them without sugar or syrup
4. Dry them
5. Make apple juice or apple cider, then freeze
6. Make applesauce, then can or freeze
7. Make apple chutney, apple jelly or apple butter
8. Make pie or pie filling (in the shape of the pie) and freeze or can
9. Make muffins, cakes, etc. to freeze.
If you have healthy, and especially SCD-friendly ideas for apple recipes, I’d love to hear them!
Apples—Take Advantage of the Season
Slow-cooked Savings
Although the next installment of the Grocery Budget Extreme Makeover isn’t quite ready, here are a few workable ideas from Oprah.com to add to your grocery budget arsenal.
I’ve utilized all of these ideas at one time or another and I have to say that using a slow cooker is my personal favorite, not only because it’s cheap and healthy, but because it’s a huge time saver. I feel most productive on the days when I get dinner going in the Crock Pot as soon as breakfast is over. And don’t forget, you can even use the Crock Pot for breakfast.
What are your favorite slow cooker recipes? I would especially love to hear any you have for overnight vegetarian breakfasts.
Homemade Science
Chemistry in Action: Gloop
The following article was written by my 10-year-old daughter, Sofia.
Hello! This is Sofia. Today my sister and I made a cool experiment—Gloop! It’s made of borax, glue, and water. We mixed it up outside and spent the next half-hour playing with it. I even made a Gloop bracelet!
The Gloop is stretchy and kind of sticky. Adding more borax makes it less sticky. It was white, but I bet adding food coloring could have changed that. After you knead it for a while, it becomes very easy to mold and acts kind of like stretchy, gloopy clay. It also is considered a “non-Newtonian fluid,” which means that it has characteristics of both solids and liquids.
Eliana likes it because, quote, “It’s sticky and fun. And you put it in a bag and play with it tomorrow.” I’m not actually sure how well it keeps, but I guess we’ll find out!
If you want to have your own Gloopy fun, here’s the recipe for Gloop:
Ingredients
Borax
Water
White glue
Instructions
1. Mix one teaspoon borax with 1/3 cup warm water in a bowl. Stir well.
2. Mix 1/6 cup white glue with 1/6 cup water in a different bowl. Stir well.
3. Mix the borax solution into the glue. Less borax makes a stickier Gloop. When the Gloop gets thick, knead it with your hands.
4. Play with the Gloop!
5. FOR SAFETY: Do not eat the Gloop. Throw it away in the trash, not the sink, or it will clog the drain.
Enjoy your Gloop!
We got this recipe from the book “Totally Gross Chemistry” by The Creative Activity Kit.
