October

A month of change in the weather transitions us from more time spent outside to more time spent inside.

Superboy, my superhero, went outside to rescue the green beans from the first frost expected that night.  The beans I planted in August ended up with enough rain and took care of themselves, growing huge.  Look at their size next to Nathan’s hands.  Inside we managed to keep warm enough by bundling up at night without turning on the furnace until October 30th.  Usually I have a rule that we don’t turn on the furnace until November.  We bailed on that with the strange weather that came with Superstorm Sandy and we were so close anyway.  The furnace filters were cleaned and ready to go earlier in the month and we were thankful for the warmth that night as the temperature plummeted with high winds and damp air.  We had a near miss with a limb from our tree nearly going through the roof.  It was luck that the other sturdy branches of the tree caught the huge limb and helped it ease its way to the ground over a 2 day period.  When it finally finished its decent it sounded like thunder over the rooftop.  Narrowly missing going through the front living room window, the last branch of the tree held it away from the glass and we only ended up with a mildly damaged gutter.  Miracles!

Nathan and I took some chalk outdoors and made some roads for his cars to ride on.  We made water and cities and home on the path with our chalk too.  Kaitlyn enjoyed playing on this later when she got home from school with Nathan as I got busy making dinner.  It was nice to have sunshine for playing outdoors after school before the time change.

Nathan loved puzzles and does very well putting together this 5 Little Monkeys puzzle and several other boxes of 25 piece puzzles that we have.  October also brings a chill in the air with it that drives us to the backs of our dressers and then finally down to the clothing storage boxes.  One day Nathan picked a pair of pants that had been in his dresser all summer to wear on a particularly chilly morning and got himself ready for his day.  Flood water pants???  He could NOT be talked out of wearing them and yes we went out in public anyway!!!  After a run through the laundry they discreetly vanished and I made sure to rummage around his room exchanging his smaller sizes for bigger ones that I’d tucked away when his big brother was done with them saving them for Nathan.

If Nathan could go to the mailbox every single day and mail something to his cousin Porter he would be in heaven.  Actually I think he’d have to stick himself in a box and mail himself to Washington State for “heaven” to occur and he’s actually enquired about that!  One day we made some Halloween pictures and cut and glued some little pumpkins.  A couple of those went for a nice long walk and were tossed in the mail box for both Porter and Samuel after they were dry.  Nathan loves using scissors, glue and the hole punch. 

While I don’t have any pictures of the annual “Ghost Cupcake” this little boy thoroughly enjoyed his as you can plainly see from his cupcake face.  The first time he got one Nathan left the cupcake itself just licking the buttercream from its top.  The next day Nathan ate his whole cupcake, however.  There ARE chocolate chips in it, I pointed out!

Cooler temperatures meant more cuddling!  I kept finding these two “boys” leaning up against each other at nap time.  We call it the “bachelor pad”.  And Spooky curled up on Nathan’s beloved Halloween costume as often as he found it no matter where it had been left.  Seeing him ON the costume curled up may give you an idea of how big Spooky is.

One Saturday at lunch we had an apple tasting.  There are not very many varieties of apples sold here at all and so I picked up a few old favorites at the farm market that they had out in a basket for sale as well as a kind I’d never heard of before.  There were Winesap, Cortland and Banana Apples!  I’d have picked out more but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep them all straight.  Our favorites were all over the place so they were all good and it was fun to try something new.

I made a “Frog’s Eye” salad to take with us to a party.  Not a good picture but yes it was green!  The texture of it combined with its name leaves you to think you might actually be eating something fiercely out of the ordinary!  Nathan asked me where my costume was for the party.  So I threw on a winter nightgown as we were walking out the door and went as a “tired Mom”.  Later that night as I was tucking Nathan into bed he said to me “Mom, thanks for wearing your costume.  That made me happy”.  Smiles… and maybe next year I’ll get more creative with myself.  I say that every year.

Nathan enjoyed fitting gears together and watching  them turn, learning how they work.  He liked playing board games with me and doing puzzles.  One day we had fun spelling words with his Boggle Jr. game.  He’s very good at matching them up to spell 3 and 4 letter words.  And the Spider Costume was on Nathan constantly.  One morning I found him out in the living room reading a book with the costume on over his PJs.  Sometimes I found him wearing ONLY the spider costume.  What a goof ball!

The leaves in the front yard were gathered up one Saturday on the rare day off that Rick’s schedule allows.  There was lots of fun outdoors for many hours that day.

Of course we read books… books about feelings, and books that helped us explore some of those feelings.  Some books helped us count; some were rhyme and reason.  They were all fun.

We read books about the changing seasons, books about Harvest and fact books about skeletons.  Apply knowledge about bodies to your own body and this is a geography lesson for the youngest student.  And again, some books explored all the feelings with such a lot of Halloween fun.  We did many finger plays at story time and did some movement and dancing to some very SPOOKY music.

Halloween safety can be discussed with some the Halloween books and as preparations are made for Trick or Treating too. 
And then there was candy!  Candy! Candy! Candy!  Nathan loved sharing his “Gobbles” (Whoppers) with me and we had fun trading them back and forth.  What a terrific month.

A is for Apple

What to do with three bushels of apples besides eat them fresh, make them into sauce, pies or caramel apples…

Drink a glass of fresh apple cider with a homemade cinnamon cider doughnut. 

Serve Apple Crabmeat Ramekins for dinner and let your husband make you Apple Crisp a la’mode for Sunday dessert.

Make Peanut Butter and Jelly cookies  sweetened with homemade applesauce for Family Night or bag lunches and serve Hot Apple Fritters for breakfast.
(Thank you to Mary Erickson, Rachael Case, Applehood & Motherpie, and The Essential Mormon Cookbook for the above recipes.)

Using pumpkin grown in the backyard (or a can will do) make up your own recipe for two sizes of positively addictive
Apple-Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins – by Heather Hand
2 cups pumpkin puree’
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
1 c. peeled diced apples or 1/2 jar of drained apple slices
2/3 c. olive oil
3 eggs
2 c. white flour
1 c. wheat flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. oats
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Using mixer, mix all ingredients together except oats.  When well blended add oats and stir in until just blended.  Lightly spray muffin pans and add muffin batter to fill 2/3rds of each muffin cup.  Bake mini-muffins for 15 minutes and regular sized muffins 20-25 minutes.  Makes lots!  (Depends on the size of tin you are using).
*You can also use about 1/2 a jar of home canned apple slices for this recipe but be sure to drain off any syrup first before adding it to your ingredients.  The texture of the muffin as well as moisture content will change with canned apple slices but the muffins are still excellent either way.

Apple Season

Word of warning: my kitchen, at this point, is not for the faint of heart!  The important parts of the kitchen WERE disinfected but in general, the house is small, the eat in kitchen is smaller still, everyone is home “helping” in one form or another and we had a lot of apples.  Perhaps I should NOT mention that because of these conditions and all of the apples taking over that all meals eaten on this day had to be prepared either outside or  ahead of time as well as eaten outside.  And dinner was in a crockpot under the kitchen table on the floor which is actually where I served it from as people got out of the tub that night and brought me their bowls to go outside with.  Also our dishwasher had gotten full before the day was over and could not be run since it is a "portable" and sits in the middle of the kitchen taking over the sink & water and also sits in front of the only countertop I have so there were dirty dishes stacked in the microwave, in front of the microwave and on the table outside.  No, not for the faint of heart!
This is the first year I can ever remember not going to a farm to pick my own apples.  It wasn’t for lack of trying.  I take it seriously enough that five years ago we drove to Cleveland to pick apples and met up with our Upstate New York family for a wonderful day.  This year there simply weren’t fruit farms with U-pick apples in three states as we investigated.  Too many apple crops had been lost.  So we turned to the Farm Market who could at least supply us with some fresh apples.  After speaking with them the guy said that he was having trouble finding a supplier himself but to call back in a few days.  When we did he said he’d found some apples but while he usually has suppliers for two months, this year he only had suppliers for two weeks “so come in on Thursday”.  Apples cost twice as much as they did last year but are still a relatively cheap fruit even at that.  $30 a bushel.  We bought two bushels of Jonathans.  There aren’t that many choices in purchasing or picking apples around here like there are in Upstate New York or even compared to Michigan.  Also, I will never take our apple picking tradition for granted again.

So two bushels of apples sat in my kitchen all week and we kept opening the box up to pull them out for lunches, snacks, baking, breakfast and even to serve at dinner time.  Rick joked that we should always buy a bushel box of apples every time we buy them.  These are soooo much tastier.  They are so much cheaper!  Haley decided they were completely different apples from what you buy at the regular store and she’s right.  Finally Saturday, canning day, arrived.  Sandy was the first one in the kitchen to “help” as she heard us begin to wash the apples and sorted between them, pulling out the best looking ones for the fruit drawer.

Sandy still loves the water.  We washed so many of our beautiful apples until we had a great pile of them to work with.

We made some apple slices first.  I like to have some jars of these on hand for pies, crisps and muffins.  The cores were all treated and tossed in a bubbling pot to make applesauce with.


Here is some of the best tasting applesauce ever as it drips from the mill.  It has a pinkish hue to it due to the type of apple we are using.  Comparison later.

My older children had a serious homework load that weekend but my younger ones enjoyed helping where they could.
 
Nathan is a strong little thing poking that apple onto the prongs at the flower end all by himself, cranking for the coring and peeling action and then separating his cores, peels and slices into the different bowls for treating.  That was the first weekend of apples.

We had eaten so many apples and love apples so much that we decided to go back one more time for just one bushel of MacIntosh apples.  By this time they were up two more dollars a bushel from just the week before because what there was left of the meager crop had been damaged over the past week by hail storms.  These apples are a little bit bigger and where the Jonathans have a pinkish hue these apples are bright white on the inside.

Tristan found his favorite kitchen job EVER with the “mashy thing” as he fed apples through the food mill and made pot after pot after pot of sauce to bring to a boil on the stove top before bottling it.

Sandy showed up every time it was time we got enough room to wash more apples.

Beautiful apples.  I still remember my parents showing me the “star” found in the middle of the apple.  I was so impressed I brought one into my kindergarten class to show them.  More slices for more applesauce.

Since we love apple snacks so much, especially paired with craisins, I pulled some apples out of our pile and Rick mixed the ingredients together to coat the apples and then arranged them in the dehydrator.  These are so yummy and just a little goes a long way.

When they were ready and cooled they were also jarred.  Don’t be fooled.  These few jars actually contain a LOT of apples.
 
You have to be careful not to eat too many of them.  And on the right you can compare the pinkish applesauce of the Jonathan one week prior to the light colored applesauce of the Mac’s. 

When all was said and done, this marking our final big canning job of the year, we did not have a single quart jar left in the whole house.  The last bottles we used were a few pint jars that had already been emptied of their contents from earlier in the year. 
In the end, besides what we ate fresh or baked with during the week, this was our yield:
2 bushels of Jonathan Apples = 7 quarts of slices and 25 quarts of applesauce.
1 bushel of MacIntosh  Apples = 13 1/2 quarts of applesauce and 2 quarts of dehydrated apple snacks.  This sounds like a lot of applesauce but shared among seven our family downs a whole quart every time we open a jar and serve it. 
Side note; the last of our garden zucchini gave us 12 cups of shreds and slices and our pumpkin, after scooping out the seeds, gave us 5 1/2 cups of puree’.