Since I grew up in a family where money was scarce, bargains on foods tend to catch my eye and the fall abundance of apples always calls to me. We drive three hours West in a hybrid car and find a local orchard and then buy apples. Some we eat before we get home and all the others I process and freeze for desserts. We also were invited to walk the orchards up the steep hill, which after sitting for hours in a car, and with camera in hand, was the best offer I had been given all day. Almost all of the apples had been picked from the trees, but there was still beauty to capture as the afternoon sun fell across the hillside.
Now, back to processing apples---but with a twist! Stick with me here. While the texture of a frozen apple is not as crisp once frozen, that fall apple flavor does remain. We core them with an apple corer, peal them and then slice them into equal sizes keeping the species types apart just for our own preferences. We immediately put them into a bowl of water and lemon juice to keep them from browning. Our sweetest and crispest were the Winesaps and they seemed to brown the fastest as well, no matter how snappy we worked...chop chop.
When the particular apple batch is are all done, I take out the slices from the huge bowl and let them drain in my hands before dumping a full pie serving amount into a freezer Ziplok bag labeled by apple type and date. I add a pre -mixed mixture of cinnamon/nutmeg/allspice to taste, about half a cup of sugar or 1/4 brown and 1/4 white sugar together, and a little salt and a teaspoon or more of cornstarch depending on their juiciness. I toss the slices a few times to coat them with the bag sealed. Then, squeezing all the air out of the bags, I pop them into the freezer for winter desserts.
With 50 apples hubby and I got an assembly line going. We were moving like a Japanese train on schedule, but my one glitch was that I had just cleaned out my pantry closet a few days before. Shelves washed, items moved and reorganized, some items taken to the basement, others to give away. A photo below showing a part of the closet and clearly illustrating how neat and organized it was! All the bins were labeled! The spices in pseudo-alphabetical order. But a bit of a mistake because ... well, perhaps you can see in the second photo.
Yes, I used the jar on the right side. I did not read the labels!! Into the first 5 batches of pie filling went Old Bay crab spice! (Something those of us who steam crabs use tons of in the summer.) Once I discovered my mistake by licking a finger I changed jars and into the last 6 batches went the cinnamon that I was supposed to add. We labeled those freezer bags that had Old Bay spice because I am too cheap to throw this food out and figured I may find some way to use that mistake. (Maybe stuff apples into chicken or use with a pork roast?)
We decided to make a pie that very afternoon with the mistake spices (Old Bay) package...and much to our surprise, while it was not super good without the cinnamon, it was really quite delicious and just a tiny bit unusual. But we each ate our entire piece of pie and we will certainly finish the rest of the pie! In the future I will add the pie spices to those batches and perhaps another bit of fruit or nuts and top with butter bits.
Hubby just dumped the slices into a pre-made pie shell with some disdain after draining the juices which he felt might be too salty and then he watched it bake not anticipating an edible snack. But we were both pleasantly surprised.
So I posted on FB that I am going to call this my "Crab Apple Pie."
