Scrumping

Today we went to another village to collect apples. My better half sold some of my jam to a gentleman who said he had a lot of apples if we wanted to collect them. Today we drove over to his house and he had about a dozen mature apple trees (~ 25 years old), most of them were heaving under the weight of apples on them.

Using our trusty fishing rod apple picking device we collected rather a lot of apples. They hadn't been sprayed for pests and the trees haven't been managed for a few years so there was some disease and because they hadn't been thinned some of the apples were small but numerous. We now have rather a lot of apples to use up, most are on the acidic side of a modern eating apple, so will be best cooked but that shouldn't stop us from eating them somehow....!

The chap was very nice and took us round his garden and he had a wicked sense of humour and we gave him a jar of my apple and ginger jam for his troubles. To be honest I did feel rather guilty in the end, we collected so many apples than I think he deserves at least a case of jam!

The only problem is we know that the trees are about 25 years old and they were planted as specific varieties, but we don't know what they all are... We think that there are probably several of each type, today's blip being a very vigorous apple, of which there may be two trees.

When we got home we sliced, photographed and then test cooked them. About half of them were acidic and went mushy under heat - "cookers" and about half of them weren't too acidic and held their shape under heat - "eaters". The actual distinction between cooking and eating apples is a bit artificial and not common outside the Anglosphere anyway, my French other half is happy to cook any apple if it tastes right and has the right texture!