CRABAPPLES, PART DEUX

Over the weekend, the Blondes set out to make Ila's World Famous Crabapple Jelly. Here's how we did it:

Clean and sort the apples and cut in half - no need to seed or peel...

Then add water or apple juice or cider to cover the apples and simmer until they are mushy. Mash them slightly and then hang over a pot in a jelly bag or sieve lined with cheesecloth. Let it sit, gently pushing down on the apples every once in a while, until you get all of the juice out of the apples.

Then bring the apples back to a boil, add sugar to taste and 1 package of Sure-Jell. Boil hard for five minutes, stirring constantly.
That's it! Just let the jelly cool and then fill plastic containers (Ball has some cute ones with purple tops), cool completely and freeze!

This jelly didn't taste exactly like Ila's, but it's better than no Crabapple Jelly at all!

CRABAPPLES!

Having just finished our second season with Borski's Farm in Kaysville which was wonderful..borskifarms.org..if you're interested, the Blondes decided to look around for other sources of local fresh food and headed to Bear Lake Valley, known far and wide for world famous raspberries. After Labor Day, Bear Lake Valley tends to have less visitors, thus making it prime for scavenger hunts by cooking Blondes.

This year, we had our eye on the wild crabapples growing everywhere up there. We found an especially good looking tree that had not yet been discovered by the local moose population.

We couldn't wait to taste one, and were surprised at how sweet they were. Crabapples aren't usually known for their sweetness, but because of a late, wet spring they seemed to be especially sweet this fall. We'll see how they taste once we turn them into Ila's Famous Crabapple Jelly, which will be the subject of our next post....