Fall Harvest...

This year was the perfect gardening season on Gabriola, and the harvest has been impressive... The fruit trees were no exception, and the apples were the best crop I've had yet.

After eating all the apples we could over the past month, it was time to make Apple Sauce to preserve the harvest for the winter season.


With the abundance of apples on the island right now, here's my apple sauce recipe;

Ingredients

18 peeled, cored, and quartered apples, fresh from the tree is best
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon (to taste)
1/4 cup of dark brown sugar
1/4 cup of white sugar (or more to sweeten)
3 cup of water

Method
1 Put all ingredients into a large pot. Cover. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

2 Remove from heat. Mash with potato masher. Add additional sugar or cinnamon to taste.

Ready to serve, either hot or refrigerated, or a good time to process it to preserve it. It also freezes easily, lasts up to one year in a cold freezer.

Enjoy!

Village Foods - shopping made easier

There's been a great new addition to our local grocery store, mini shopping carts!

They're new, shiny and today at lunch there were a number of them being maneuvered around the isles of Village Foods by Gabriola's youth. It's a fun way to get the kids interested in shopping. Let them cut out photos from a flyer, or write down three items on their "list" and let them do the shopping, it's a great way to include them in some of the family chores.

At the end, while you pay the bill (which may include a few items you didn't see on either list), the kids can head over to the cookie jar- where they can exchange a smile for a cookie. Life is sweet.

Growing tall on Gabriola

The Vancouver Island Exhibition (VIEX) was held over the August 20-23 weekend in Nanaimo and drew in a number of visitors. My kids took part of the “sunflower” competition; sunflower seeds were given away in the spring along with the entry forms. We eagerly set them in the ground and began watering, soon we could see them from our living room and we dug them up to take them in. The kids we’re over the moon to both receive a big blue ribbon for their age category and I was pretty happy to have the reassurance that Gabriola is a great place to garden.