Crabapples

The final recipe of my pie-testing job. Crabapple. Months later than everything else was finished because, well, I had to wait for the tree in the front yard to be ready to harvest. There's really no other way to get crabapples, at least not out here. Not something you can find in the produce department.

They're tiny little things; it took two and a half pounds to get six cups of finely chopped crabapples. One hour and fifteen minutes of slicing and chopping tiny tiny apples.

Why, oh why, did someone think this was a good idea? It's definitely thrifty. It's using extremely local produce, handpicked at the peak of ripeness. It has a Little House on the Prairie kind of vibe to it - living off the land, using what you have, work hard for what you get.....
But oh, the tedium of chopping hundreds of tiny little crabapples. Tiny little apples that try to escape, rolling out from under the knife, refusing to let go of their stems. Much


harder to work with than their larger relatives. But it does bake up pretty - deep pink and bubbling inside a golden, sugar-sprinkled crust. It looks rather like rhubarb, and tastes rather like rhubarb. Rhubarb that's been crossed with a very tart Granny Smith apple. A hint of cinnamon would have been good. It was quite tasty, our dinner guests really liked it.

Would I make this again? Laura, who had nothing to do with the pie said " It was worth the effort for me", meaning that while she wouldn't do it herself, it was certainly worth the eating if someone else made it.

That's pretty much how I feel about it. It was good, but not worth the trouble. It would however be a fiendish addition to the new apprentice hazing arsenal:

chop the flour

detail my car

prep 10 pounds of crabapples

No. That would just be cruel.