Applesauce & Apple Butter

This is going to be a lazy post (I apologize now). I dumpster a lot of apples in the late fall, and this year I also went apple picking at a local farm, so I've had a lot of use for apple preserving tactics. My favorites? Applesauce and apple butter. Applesauce is perfect for Thanksgiving or to pair with Hanukkah potato latkes. Or, y'know, applesauce is a pretty great snack by itself too.

The excellent part is this: when you get tired of your canned applesauce, you can make apple butter out of it! I love giving jars of apple butter to family during the holidays. It's thoughtful, homemade, and lasts about 1 year if you use proper canning technique. After you open the jar, it'll keep in the fridge for at least another 2-8 months, depending on how much sugar you put in it (since sugar is a preservative).

Here's my favorite recipe for making applesauce at home. You can tweak their recipe by adding lemon juice (also works as a preservative), keeping the rinds in there as you cook the apples down and removing them before you mash everything up:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applesaucewomill.htm



Now, apple butter is way easier than you'd think. It's literally just cooking applesauce down at a very low temperature for a very long time until there's very little moisture left in it. You can add extra spices and more sugar during this process too, depending on how tart or sweet your applesauce was to begin with. There's two methods to achieve apple butter: 1) cook it on the stove at a low heat or 2) use a crock pot at very low heat.

The crock pot is a little safer, since you have to leave it on while you're presumably at work or otherwise living your life. Here's good instructions on how to make apple butter. You can futz with the proportions to make more or less, depending on how much applesauce you start out with:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applebutter.htm


Something I like to do when I'm giving tiny jars of apple butter to people is spice them up a little. For pretty much all home canning, you're using jars with 2 pieces to the lid - a ring and a flat part. If you have some fabric scraps (a cool old t-shirt works fine), you can put the piece of fabric in between the flat part of the lid and the ring, like this:


Now you don't need wrapping paper!

Other apple ideas are apple juice (which comes out of making a lot of applesauce) or apple cider.

Ingredients not donated or dumpstered: spices

Peach-Mango Salsa & Ginger Mojitos

Recently I had the pleasure to go through Hurricane Irene. It didn't hit us very hard in Maryland, but everyone was told not to go out of the house. So, while I waited for the power to go out with a friend (it never did), we made some peach-mango salsa, guacamole, and ginger mojitos, then sat down and watched Royal Tenenbaums as the wind and rain raged outside.

PEACH-MANGO SALSA


Ingredients:

- 3 small peaches, diced (from a large bushel given to us at work by a customer bought from a local farmer's market)
- 1 mango, diced
- 3-5 cups diced (fresh) tomatoes
- 2 cups diced white onion
- 1 clove garlic
- 1/2 - 1 jalapeno pepper - with seeds (depending on desired spiciness)
- 1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced
- Juice from 2 limes
- 1 bundle of fresh cilantro, chopped
- Salt (we needed quite a bit), black pepper, & cayenne to taste

Place tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, and bell peppers in a large pot over medium heat for 10 minutes, allowing the tomatoes to release their juices.
Add peaches & mango, then cook for an additional 5 minutes.
By this time, there should be a LOT of liquid accruing in your pot. Depending on how watery you like your salsa to be, drain as much off as you'd like. I ended up draining off about half the liquid (but kept enough to use as canning fluid for a few jars).
Add lime juice, cilantro, and extra spices.
Cool down the salsa before serving.
Can it if you'd like so you can bring it to a BBQ or pot-luck or give it as a gift to a friend. Plus, if you can it, you can enjoy the salsa in the winter when none of the ingredients are in season anymore! But BEWARE: There's not a whole bunch of acid in this recipe, so I wouldn't use the salsa after a few months - 6 at most (even if it's been properly sealed the whole time). If you want to keep the salsa longer, just add some apple cider vinegar to your mixture and it should make it last a little longer.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Garlic, cilantro (from garden), salt, black pepper, & cayenne

GINGER MOJITOS

This is my favorite drink in the world. I first encountered a ginger mojito when I was living in Prague going to film school (which is funny, since the drink is Cuban in origin). Plain mojitos were all the rage in Prague when I lived there, and the ginger spin on the drink was on the menu at this really awesome lounge/club named Radost FX (Rihanna notably shot one of her music videos there). If you're ever in Prague, I'd highly recommend hitting it up.

They make a way better ginger mojito than I ever could, but this is my meager attempt at trying to recreate it. You can also do a virgin version (that actually tastes almost exactly the same as the alcoholic one and is delicious) by just omitting the rum.

I feel badly that this recipe uses a lot of ingredients not dumpstered, but when you have SO many limes and ginger (which we had), it's a good way to use them when you're tired of using them in other ways. Plus, when there's a natural disaster, everyone seems to want a drink...

Ingredients:

- 2 shots white rum (optional)
- 1 cup club soda (add slightly more club soda for the virgin version)
- 1+ tsps minced ginger (I put in way more since I love ginger - think like 4 tsps for that extra bite to contrast the sweetness)
- 10+ fresh mint leaves (Again, I like way more for freshness, but most other recipes call for 10-12 leaves)
- Juice from 1 lime
- Lime slice to garnish
- 2-4 tsps sugar or simple syrup if you're more patient/making a big batch
- A bunch of ice (crushed for more of a tropical feel)

Muddle (basically mash together) ginger, mint, and halved lime (with rind) with a mortar & pestle or a muddler (if you don't have either of these, just put the ingredients in a small bowl or cup and use a spoon or similarly blunt object like the top of your rum bottle to mash them up).
Add this mixture to your ice, rum, and club soda.
Add simple syrup (or sugar).
Mix and enjoy!

Items not dumpstered or donated: Mint (from garden), rum, club soda

BANANAS!

I have the good fortune of dumpstering bananas often, usually in large numbers. Even dumpstering 1/8th of the bananas in the dumpster will usually yield up to 10 bunches.

Bananas are great, because they're pretty easily frozen and keep for a long time, regardless of how ripe they were when you got them initially. You can use them for smoothies, vegan banana ice cream (just mash up with a little cinnamon, brown sugar, and nutmeg. Freeze it and you're set), or one of my personal favorites: banana bread.


Banana bread is great for a lot of reasons.

1) I'm poor. Gift-giving times like pot lucks, birthdays, or Christmas can be difficult on the rent money, so finding cheaper, home-made alternatives to give as gifts is awesome. If you make a seriously yummy loaf of banana bread and wrap it with a jar of Nutella (less than $3) to spread on top, you just made someone's tummy very happy.
2) As stated before: banana bread + Nutella. GREAT.
3) Banana bread can be used as breakfast food AND snack food AND dessert food. Look at that versatility!
4) Overripe or defrosted bananas are actually ideal for making banana bread, so it's a dumpster diver's dream!

I'm still experimenting with finding the best banana bread recipe, so I'd encourage you to find one online or through your family that seems to be popular or to your liking (vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, etc.) until my recipe is fine-tuned enough to post.

To prepare you, most (non-vegan) banana bread recipes call for:

Ingredients:

- 3-4 bananas
- Butter
- Sugar (brown or white)
- 1 Egg
- Vanilla
- Baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- Flour
- Chocolate chips (optional)
- 1 loaf pan (most grocery stores will sell recyclable/disposable loaf pans if you're giving the bread as a gift or taking it to a pot luck).

If you're defrosting the bananas - be forewarned - there's usually some liquid at the bottom of your container once they defrost. This is NORMAL. Just discard the liquid and add maybe 1 more banana than your recipe called for (like, if it says to use 3, go with 4).

Also, I usually freeze bananas with their skins on. This just means that you need to cut them off before you put them in a smoothie or make vegan ice cream.

Also, don't be afraid if your bananas have brown spots. This is also normal.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Butter, egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt, flour (from the sadly now-defunct Beet Food Co-op)