Dehydrating apples and peaches

The last of my peaches were ripe, so I decided to dehydrate them.  As with pears, I'm not sure that peaches really taste like anything special dehydrated.  I'll probably try and use them for cooking, otherwise they just get snacked on for the sake of snacking by anyone they are offered to.

These were roadside apples of various flavours and textures.

Then, there's the Blackboy peach tree I bought from Southern Woods nursery several years back.  Note that it looks to be a Golden Queen peach.  It was the first year this tree fruited, and I have to say that I'm glad it is a Golden Queen.  Who needs two Blackboys?  And they were fat juicy fruit.

The Blackboy peach tree was already present when I moved into this property.  It seems to have some pest problem, and gets marks which are filled with crystalised stuff.  Probably some obvious pest like codling moth for all I know.  I need to look into it for next year.

Got a decent amount of bagged dehydrated peach in the cupboard, and huge jars filled with dehydrated apple.

Bottling My Apple Cider Vinegar

I was a little hesitant to pick most of the reachable apples from the one of the better roadside apple trees last autumn, but I did it in small amounts, and no-one else seemed to want them.  Most of the roadside apples I gathered from that tree, as well as all the others were juiced and put into containers under the hot water cylinder.

There the most attention they saw, was the mice climbing on top and leaving droppings.  Yum!

I bottled one too soon, and it turned into rather undrinkable apple cider.  Not acidic in any way, just a bit musty in flavour.    The other, I left in there ignoring it, hoping it wouldn't get moldy.

Here it is:



And bottled up, turning out to be around 3.5 litres:



A huge success.  I reused the Bragg's bottles I bought, and they are still accurate.  They would indeed be organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar.  And the liquid inside looks pretty much the same as the original Bragg's vinegar.  Next year, I'm going to double the amount I make.  I just have to find a use for it.