It's Apple Picking Time

D has come up with some clever solutions to harvesting the apples.

Sometimes you can reach them.

Note the apple bag - more about that later in this blog entry.

But some of the trees we have are "Standard", which means they can be 20-30 feet tall!

This tree we have named Eastern Star and this year it is loaded with apples!

They are a good cooking and eating apple.

To get the high apples down, D made a "panking pole".

This is made of a cut-down narrow hoe put into a lightweight antenna pole.

Here is a three-second flick of the pole in action.

 It's not really lightweight, as you can imagine.

Notice the tarps spread under the tree.  We do not want to use fallen apples for cider - they would be ok for cooking - but since cider is not pasteurized, it is better to avoid contamination with critter droppings.

 The gorgeous red apples on this tree are "Belvedere".   About half are reachable, the rest will need panking.

Check out the apple gathering system.  The apple bag is made of the top 8 inches of a five-gallon bucket.  Sewn to that is a feed-sack.  The straps are webbing from a lawn chair.  Pretty clever, I think!

And another efficient set-up is this gathering pail.
It consists of a 30 gallon galvanized trash can, a square of plywood with a center hole and bracing, the top 8 inches of two 5-gallon buckets.

 The bottom bucket piece stays in the plywood.  A feed-sack is pulled up.  The second bucket piece is reinserted to hold the feedsack.

The gathered apples are poured into the feedsack held in the bucket.  

When it's full, remove the top bucket, gather the top of the feedsack.  Remove the plywood and take the full sack out of the bucket.

Definitely a lot of ingenuity.  

And quite economical.

A great combination! 

Now it's ready to load the apple sacks on the tractor bucket for a drive to the cider house.

Apple Picking

It's a gray, cloudy day.

D has been picking apples and putting them in bags to be transported to the cider house.

Tommy likes to help - actually, he's hoping for a backrub and perhaps a game of ball - look at all those "balls" on the ground!

The tractor makes transporting all those bags a bit easier.

Look at all the apples still to be picked.

He figures there are 17 bushels in these bags.  That's a lot of apples!  And picking has only just begun.

We should get two to three gallons of cider from each bushel.

First Cider with the new Cider House and Equipment

Today was our first cider making of the season.  Ed built a wonderful cider house,

and he and Bry put the press and grinder in place.

 On the left is the grinder.  The press is on the right.  Green boxes are for storage.  You can see part of the large cider container on the far right.

We picked some apples from S's tree last week, and D picked some from one of our trees where the apples were so abundant that they threatened to break the branches!  They will be more ripe in a few weeks, but he hated risking breaking the limbs.

Here is the washing station.  

Apples are in the white bags.

They will be sorted on the table and washed in the trough.

Then they will be lifted to the platform.

From the platform, they will be put on the slide to the grinder.

There is a hole in the side of the building to accommodate the slide.

When the slide is removed, the hole is covered with siding.

When the day's grinding is finished, the pomace (ground apples) fills the wash bin.

The pomace, placed in a cloth, is called a cheese - and several cheeses are stacked. 

We stacked five today.

The press compresses the cheeses and the juice flows.

The end result:  7 gallons of apple juice. 

The containers (5-gallon buckets) are covered, the hole in the lid has an airlock, yeast will be added, and they will ferment over the next few months.  Each batch is an experiment.   For the last couple of years, some were fantastic, some not so much.

Simply Thai

A lovely restaurant in Oneonta, NY

We had errands in Oneonta today, and we planned to go to Brooks' Barbecue for lunch.  Alas, they had a sign in the door saying they were closed today.  So we went back downtown to try the restaurant named "Simply Thai".

We ordered lunch specials.  They begin with salad.

HOUSE SALAD

Fresh Greens Served with 

Warm Peanut Dressing

I ordered a small cup of soup.  It had cute little mushrooms (straw mushrooms?) and chunks of chicken.  It was a little spicy - their level 2 is what we requested.  The soup is a thin sweet/sour broth.

TOM YUM

Thai Hot & Sour Soup

with Lemongrass, Mushroom and Roasted Chilies,

Finished with Scallion

For a main course, D ordered:

SPICY THAI BASIL

NOODLES

("DRUNKEN NOODLES")

Fresh Wide Rice Noodles Stir-Fried

with Onion, Carrot, Bell Pepper,

Baby Corn, Mushroom and Thai Basil

 There were three shrimp and lots of wide rice noodles.  It had a smokey flavor.  The vegetables were attractively cut.  D ordered Level 2 heat.  Spicy but not painful.

I ordered:

MASSAMAN CURRY

Indian Influenced - Massaman

Curry Paste Simmered in Coconut

Milk with Potato, Carrot, Onions

Peanuts and a Hint of Tamarind

Our server suggested ordering Level 1 heat, since curry powder already is a bit hot.

There were three shrimp.  This is served with white jasmine rice.

The lunch and dinner menus are almost the same, with the lunch portions smaller and less expensive.

You can see their menu here.

We enjoyed our lunch very much.  

Just one odd thing.   When we finished our salad, and the server picked up the salad plate, she handed us our fork to save for the main course.  So we sat there holding our fork like at a boarding house dinner, waiting for the next course.  

Building a Cidery

We do have some apples this year.  And we have a grinder.  And a press.  And fermenting containers.  But we have nowhere to do the work.  In past years, we did it in the driveway.

But now we will have a building.

Here's its future location











:





Here it is in progress.
Well - it's in kit form.  D is moving the roofing.
From right to left is the door.  The cider press covered in two tarps.  The pile of components.

Hard to believe that little pile will be a 12 x 15 building!

Building the floor.  Notice that Bry now has two supervisors!

Before the 4th wall was put up, the very heavy cider press was moved in.

Working on the roof.
Ed and Bry have lost their third man!

With Ed Maynard supervising, it is fully framed the first day.
He had help from his cousin Rick and son Bryant.

Ed and Bry got the building completely framed and installed the purlins.














And reinforcements in the form of Michelle and Rick arrived to help put the green metal roof.

Day Two:  

Next come the eaves and soffit.

It's Ed and Bry working alone. 

This is becoming a really attractive building.

With the eaves trimmed beautifully, it's time to put up the siding.

The men worked two long days and accomplished all this.

They will be back another day to finish the west siding, the gables, the door, the roof vent.

We may wait to install the windows until after we figure out the best location for them.

If you are wondering how the colors were chosen. . . Ed picked them.  It's apple red and leaf green.  Perfect colors for a cidery.

DAY THREE:  Adding the finishing touches, and it's done!

This building is even better than we had hoped.  Ed came up with an excellent design.  He and Bry with help from Rick executed it perfectly.  We should be able to be operational at the end of September, 2015.

Ciabatta

I'm ready for a chewy, crusty bread.  I found the recipe for ciabatta and that appealed to me.  The night before, I made the biga, allowing it to rest overnight.

Biga

4 ounce (1/2 cup) water
1/2 teaspoon active-dry yeast
5 ounce (1 cup) all-purpose flour

Here's what it looked like at night.

And here's the next morning.

 Ciabatta

17 ounces (2 cups + 2 tablespoons) water
1 teaspoon active-dry yeast
Biga
20 ounces (4 cups) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt

After adding the next ingredients and beating, it was obvious it was a very slack dough.

After 10 minutes with the stand mixer, I had a runny batter.  10 more minutes, still a runny batter.  I gave up and added three more ounces of flour.  It finally came together after 15 more minutes of beating.  But you can see how soft it is.

It is almost like trying to handle jello.

They were very well received.  I guess I'll try this again!

Sadly, one tray got burned on the bottom shelf of the oven before I caught it.  That meant I could not take it to the covered-dish lunch.  I'll have to trim off the dark places and eat them myself.

The recipe says 475º for 20-30 minutes.  Too hot, too long. . . 

Crumpets

We picked up some crumpets at Trader Joe's.  It had been years since we had eaten them.  They were a treat, so I decided to find a recipe to try.

After proofing the yeast in 1/4 cup water and a bit of sugar, you add bread (320g) and AP (320g) flour, 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar,  and 2 cups of water.  Beat for a few minutes.

After a one-hour rest, it should have risen and fallen.

Add 10g salt and rest for a few minutes before adding 2/3 cup milk and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.

Then it's ready to put on the griddle.  Don't turn until the top is holey and dryish.

Serve the end result with lots of butter and anything else that appeals.  I used honey, but I'm thinking nutella would be good, too.

The holes are great at holding butter!!

These may have been too thin.  I did not use crumpet rings.  Maybe next time.

Rainbow

Tonight a quick burst of rain appeared out of no where, but the sun was still shining, so we got to enjoy a rainbow.

A lovely end to the day.

A Money Gift

We usually give a check for the kid's birthday.  This year is a special one, and since the check tends to sit uncashed for months, we thought about giving cash.  But how to do it?  In a card? Just hand it out?

A web search found a solution.  Origami money.  Oh, yeah, but you need talent for that.  And the ability to follow complicated directions.  That's a smallish problem.  We tried quite a few samples we found online - hearts, chains, boxes.  Sigh.  But this one turned out quite well and was surprisingly easy.

Fold the sides toward the center.

Fold the bill in half to make a crease.

Fold the corners to meet the center crease.

Fold the top to the center crease.

Fold the bottom to the center crease.

Fold it in half along the center crease.

Put three or four together.

Fasten at the center.

Gently open the petals.

And the final product.