In the last few years, I’ve become a free foraged fruit
fanatic! Since we don’t have our own fruit trees, I’ve found others giving away
some of theirs for free on Craigslist, Freecycle and putting the word out to friends and neighbors. I also began scouting the area around where we
live and on the drive to town.
So far this year we’ve foraged for free:
-10 gallons of locally grown cherries
-4 gallons of locally grown organic plums
Last week when our little nugget and I went on an afternoon walk, I saw a box of apples sitting along the road with “free” written on
the box. Luckily our
jogging stroller has a storage area on the bottom so I loaded up the apples. When I got home I weighed the box, a whopping 20 pounds!
The reason they were free is they all had worm holes in them. I’ve learned not
to be afraid of worm holes in apples and foraged fruit. With a little time and patience you can
cut around the buggy parts and glean quite a bit of good fruit.
The apples were not sprayed so basically they’re organic and
obviously locally grown. The best part? They’re sweet apples, not tart crab
apples. What a score!
I immediately got to work cutting up the apples to make
applesauce. Applesauce is our favorite thing to use these types of
apples for due to all the random sized pieces.
As I cut
out the usable parts of the apples, I put them in a big stock pot. Once I was
done cutting, I put about ¼ cup of water in the pot, put on a lid and cooked until the
apples were soft. Then I ran them through our food mill
and had
fresh, sweet applesauce with no added sweetener needed!
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and had
fresh, sweet applesauce with no added sweetener needed!
We don’t have a lot of
storage space for canned goods but do have freezer space so I always freeze our
applesauce. Once it is cool, I put it into reusable plastic tubs and freeze.
Then we can pull one out and thaw it anytime we want applesauce throughout
the year.
So are you curious how much I gleaned from the wormy apples? We ended up with 10 pounds of homemade applesauce plus one big bowl of apple scraps for the compost bin. I was even more thrilled when I figured out it is a cost savings of close to $50 based on the average
price of a jar of organic applesauce from the local health food store!
Here are a few easy tips on how to salvage wormy
fruit:
1. Don’t be squeamish and be prepared for worms and bugs. I
say this because if you’re going to freak out about a worm inching
out of the fruit at you, this isn’t a project for you. You also might find
bees, ants, earwigs and a host of other interesting insects.
2. Test cut a few pieces of fruit from your batch. I know
from experience that if I see a dark spot on the bottom of the apple, chances
are high there are insects taking up residence in the core. I checked a few of
the apples from this batch and that was the case. Therefore I didn’t bother
cutting into the core on these apples and instead cut around them.
3. Check for worm/bug tunnels and cut around them. You can
easily see the holes on the fruit and know something has tunneled in. Sometimes
you may even find a live insect in the tunnel.
4. Check for bruises. Sometimes when foraging for free
fruit, some of it is downfall. This means that the fruit has hit the ground and
not picked fresh from the branches. This can result in browned, bruised fruit
that can easily be cut off. Sometimes bruising can also happen if the fruit is
very ripe and piled on top of each other so the weight causes bruising.
5. Know you will have a lot of scraps left over to feed to
your animals or compost. I am one to always try to use the most of everything I
can so sometimes have a hard time with any waste. When it comes to wormy fruit,
there’s just no way around it. I started re-framing my view of it and decided
that I actually saved more of it from going to waste by cutting out the good
parts for us to eat!
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We have a small orchard at a nearby park. Last year I was brave enough to start picking the spray-free, organic, local apple, pears and grapes. I fortunately only met about 2-3 worms in a whole batch of fruit. I'll be honest, I don't handle 'worms' very well, in fact, just thinking about them now gives me the heebie geebies! LOL! But you are right, it's better than wasting the good fruit, especially if it is free! Thanks so much for sharing at Living Green Tuesdays!
ReplyDeleteI get the heebie gebbies too on the first worm or two of the season and then make myself toughen up for the free fruit :)
DeleteGood for you! Many people just throw fruit like this away. I have always been the one taking it off their hands to make my own applesauce or apple jam, canned pears, and the like.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely takes more work to use fruit like this, but it is so nice to have free food :) Hmmm, I need to scout around the new hood to see who might be getting rid of their fruit!
Good for you for being a wormy fruit user too! In our neighborhood the other big competitor for the free fruit is bears coming down from the mountain to fill up for the winter. I think we're going to take another walk this afternoon to see if we can spot any more free fruit in the neighborhood!
DeleteI have two Golden Delicious apple trees in the backyard, but they are just infested with bugs and worms. I usually end up picking them up from the ground and putting them out with my yard waste, but occasionally I'll get brave and make a batch of apple sauce. Thanks for the reminder that I should get to it this year! Waste not, want not as my grandmother used to say.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great reminder of a quote to live by, "Waste not, want not." I can remember hearing that one growing up and had forgotten about it but it so true! Hope you get a chance to salvage some of those apples this year :)
DeleteA word of caution when composting wormy apples: The eggs will survive the compost and come back to your fruit trees in the following year. You have to actually throw them in the garbage or perhaps burn them, or feed them to chickens whose manure runs hot and will kill the apple maggots. Otherwise they keep coming back, can invest whole neighbourhoods and eventually kill the trees. That is happening right now in my town, and old heritage trees are dying.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this, that is good info to know. Where we live we get really deep freezes, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks of subzero temps. From what I read that may be enough to kill off the apple maggots in our compost bin but if you live in an area where you don't get deep freeze temps it sounds like composting may not be the best option!
DeleteThat sounded very doom and gloom. Sorry! And I don't think my comment applies to all of your worms, just the apple maggot which leaves the trails through the apple and ends in the core.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, I think you shared a really valid point and something for folks to be aware of so thank you!
DeleteGreat tips! It's so important to avoid wasting food. In my house we often end up with odds and ends of random fruits, not enough of any one kind to make any particular thing, and none of them quite fresh anymore...but we have learned that ALMOST any fruits will combine well in a cooked fruit sauce.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing that great post to make a fruit sauce, what a wonderful idea! We're just starting into more solids with our baby so I'm sure we will have more of the half eaten fruit in our future so love that idea. I especially like the sound of putting fruit sauce on ice cream- yum!
DeleteI use wormy apples to since we have several trees on our property. Occassionally we have a year with few worms and a plentiful harvest. I've made the same mistake Evelyn mentioned. Now I give the scraps and wormy apples to the alpacas who live next door. I don't think their manure is hot like chicken, so I wonder if it's killing the worms or not.
ReplyDeleteGotta love free food! Great post! Thank you for sharing this at the Carnival of Home Preserving!
ReplyDeletethis is great to know! just discovered you blog and I love it! I'm your newest follower - hope you can check me out too! : )
ReplyDeletehttp://allthingsprettyandlittle.blogspot.com/
Checking craiglist right now. I don't know about the live worms though...
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking up to Healthy 2Day Wednesday, hope to see you there Wednesday.
Fabulous picture of the worm coming out of the apple!
ReplyDeleteI make jelly and juice for pectin with apples from a neighbour's tree. With jelly, the apples can be very wormy indeed to begin with and not hurt the final product. If I miss anything, I know the fruit will get boiled and strained multiple times before they're eaten
We do compost the remains, but since we're in the middle of a city, I think our chances of infecting other trees are fairly small.
My mom used to make apple jelly when I was a kid and I loved it! I have never made it myself since I use our wild huckleberries for jam. If I get any more apples this year I should try the jelly. I'm curious about making pectin, do you use it in other recipes instead of store bought pectin?
DeleteI hadn't ever thought of checking on Craigslist for free fruit. What a great idea! Thanks for showing how to cut through wormy fruit. I probably would have avoided apples like that otherwise. : )
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this at Fill Those Jars Friday. Hope to see you again tomorrow!
Perhaps I can work myself up to this. :) We love making homemade applesauce and so wish we had some local and organic options. I end up grabbing them from Whole Foods most weeks. We'll have to branch out and look some more. Thanks for sharing your post over on Tuesday Greens!
ReplyDeleteWith Americans wasting half of the food produced in this country, this post was a wonderful way of showing how he we can turn something that would otherwise be tossed into the trash into something delicious and nutritious!
ReplyDeleteWe used to go to an apple farm which is next to our home. Those are organic and local apples. If I get wormy apples then I don’t think anything and I just throw away. I should work on this instead of throwing them away.
ReplyDeleteWow... I am really impressed with the amount of fruit you have been able to get for free! I am trying to be better about finding a use for everything
ReplyDeleteI never thought of checking on CL. When you get them from people in your area, do you just knock on their door and ask? I have always been shy about doing that, but always sad to see that they let them go to waste
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tips! It "bugs" me (ha ha) to waste food, and I try to salvage the apples from our local trees too. I admit I usually get my husband to do the first run through so I can avoid most of the worms though. :)
ReplyDeletewe moved to a new town that is full of unattended apple trees. We were so excited, we would pick them off the tree and the ground to make apple sauce. Even our own trees had some issues, but we made tons of applesauce and the kids really enjoyed it. Can't wait to prune our trees and see what happens next year. thanks for the tips.
ReplyDelete