Apple harvest and their many uses

Homegrown apples.

I only posted my menu plan yesterday, but it almost immediately went out the window when Paul decided it was time to harvest our apples.

Paul harvesting apples from our tree.

Two big tubs full later and I suddenly had to think up a lot of uses for apples. Luckily Paul didn't abandon me with the task of processing them.

He got to work grading and washing the first basket of apples. Any perfect ones went into our fruit bowl, the rest we juiced, dehydrated or stewed in honey, butter and cinnamon to make mini crumbles for the girls' lunchboxes.

This was slow going because we had to do all the peeling, coring and cutting by hand.

Dehydrator filling up with apple slices.

Hand processing apples for juicing and stewing.

Paul straining apple juice through a cheese cloth and sieve.

It all turned out great but we still had a lot of apples to get through, so this morning I made Soaked Apple Porridge for breakfast and this afternoon I baked a batch of Apple and Cinnamon Oat Muffins, which I've frozen to pull out as lunchbox fillers over the coming weeks.

Tonight Paul and I got cranking on the second big tub of apples. Fortunately it was a lot easier than last night because I borrowed a nifty device from my friend, Amber.

You can see the device in the photo below. It peels, cores and slices up whole apples in one easy motion. And my clever husband figured out how to work it, so we were good to go.

The green device peels, cores and slices up whole apples. Revolutionary!

L loved helping us process the apples.

L and S loved watching the new device work, and both girls proved themselves helpful by clearing apple cores and peels into the compost tub.

Tonight we stewed two big pots full of apple slices, this time in honey, butter and vanilla thanks to a tip from my friend, Kate. Vanilla is really good with apples, I've discovered.

I'm freezing lots of old salsa jars full of the stewed apples so we can pull them out in smallish quantities over the coming months.

L has already had vanilla stewed apples tonight with homemade yoghurt and declared it, "delicious." And I've set aside some in the fridge to have on our Blender Oat Pancakes tomorrow morning.

The dehydrated apple rings are a big hit with everyone, so I've got another batch of them on the go tonight and will make more tomorrow with our last bowl of damaged apples.

And I've still got it on my menu plan to make an Apple Pie Smoothie later in the week. Hopefully we won't all be sick of apples by then.

Have you ever had an abundance of apples? What did you do with them?