Okay, maybe this isn't the most appetizing photo, but here's some apple crisp with cinnamon coconut ice cream from dumpster apples.

Tomatoes

Unfortunately, this plant never reached its full potential, because the main stalk became broken, so the small unripe tomatoes had to be ripened inside, which was something of a disappointment. There's always next year!

Applesauce!

I hit the apple jackpot a few nights ago, so now I find myself with a lot more apples than I can consume in the near future. Freezing is basically the only way that I preserve foods, because I think that canning and other methods are too time consuming. Plus, most foods are easy to freeze; cook, mash, freeze can get you pretty far.

I'm not a huge applesauce person, but sometimes if I'm making muffins or something similar I like to replace some of the oil with applesauce to make things a little more healthy. Plus, I absolutely have no pill swallowing abilities, so even swallowing half a vitamin pill requires applesauce for me.


To make the applesauce I just cut the apples in half, baked them until they were soft and starting to brown, then cut out the cores and blended everything in my blender. I have a crazy Vita-Mix blender, so my applesauce came out super smooth even though I left the skin on the apples. I didn't add any sugar, but I did add a little bit of lemon juice because I didn't want it to turn brown, but I'm pretty sure that cooked apples don't brown like raw apples and the lemon juice was totally unnecessary.

Cheesy mashed dumpster potato

One frowning dumpstered potato

+

unappetizing looking cashew cheese

=the best mashed potatoes I've ever eaten. My cat would agree.