A bushel of apples weighs somewhere between 42 and 48 pounds, depending on your data source. It's pretty impressive then that our family of three has already gone through two bushels of apples this season (I just bought our third today!). That is consuming about 12 pounds of apples a week, maybe somewhat more. Wow.
What have we been doing with all these apples?
-Apple syrup
-Freezing apple slices for pies
-Apple sauce
-Apple crisps and pies (some of these we've given away and entertained with...)
-Dried apples
-Apple-pumpkin soup
-Lots of apples for eating
Tucker eats fresh apples in the messiest way ever--nibbling off the peel and spitting the peel out wherever he is. He confessed to eating the apple this way at preschool even (I am now dutifully cutting and peeling the apples for him in that setting). Still, he loves apples, doesn't cough on them like last year, and easily eats at least two a day (more if there is opportunity). Ben likes Tucker to eat as many apples as possible because of the mess. Apples would be a horrible food disaster if Ben wasn't so diligent in cleaning up after the boy.
When I get a bushel, I usually fill a whole big drawer of our fridge with apples, put about an equivalent amount in two layers separated by brown grocery bags in a cooler that Austin takes into our basement for storage, and then use the rest in the moment for apple sauce or drying or some similar project.
This level of apple eating verges on the ridiculous, but when I can get a bushel of apples for $10 at our local orchard, why not???? I feel like I'm practically stealing the apples from them, but they seem to be glad to sell them and tell me they'll be manning the apple shed until Christmas. I imagine we'll all be a bit sick of apples by then.
