Apple butter

Here comes the recipe you asked for Anne — I'm sorry you had to wait. There have been a couple of e-mails regarding baking bread, which I'll answer soon (I hope).
You find a conversion calculator here.

APPLE BUTTER

1 kg apples,
100 - 200 g muscovado sugar
2 eggs
100 g butter
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
½ tsp all spice

Peel, core and chop the apples and cook them in a small amount of apple juice or water, until soft.
Add the remaining ingredients and let it simmer in water bath until it thickens. Don't let it boil!

I'm more generous with the spices than written here — I'd say this is a minimum. As for sugar, how much you use depends on how sweet the apples are — I never take more than 100 g.
You can use this recipe for most fruit butters — when I make pear butter I exchange cinnamon for ginger.

A fruitful day

Illustration by Elsa Beskow

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With all the fruit at hand I had to change my plans to take care of as much of it as possible today. It's a task I enjoy — but maybe not when I'm trying to get organized to go away for a couple of weeks. I like the contemplative part of peeling and cutting so even if my body spent the morning in my kitchen my mind traveled the world and I went from one decade to another in seconds. Thinking of how we went to different apple farms in New England to pick apples. Something we don't have here so I asked a million (more or less — probably more) questions when the owner turned up. My questions must have been adequate as the owner asked me where I had my apple farm.

My mind wandered to Winnipeg and the fall I spent there — I remember how odd I thought it was when we picked the last strawberries in late October. A bit surprising as I was told it was too cold to grow apples there.
Thinking about thinking made me think (hope you can follow the thinking here) of how I and a colleague discussed our jobs — she said she always listened to the radio while weaving and I said that I very seldom did that as weaving, if it's not a too complicated pattern, is perfect for letting the thoughts wander. But I don't want to think, she said. Thoughts are not always pleasant. I'm most grateful for a life on the sunny side where unpleasant thoughts have been rare.

It is late afternoon here and I've just had tea and decided not to spend any more time in the kitchen today.
I have a nice heap with dried apples, applesauce drying to become apple leather, several jars of apple butter and apples all over the kitchen

You don't have to be clairvoyant to figure out that I'll be quite busy tomorrow; doing everything I meant to do the last couples of days. I have all my lists from previous trips to the island saved in the computer; how much food we left, how much food we use, which clothes we left and what to bring. In the future I'll need to make o copy of the lists as I have no use for them if the computer refuse to work.