Pies part two

I ended up throwing the pie idea to the wayside, as we didn't have any shortening, and that was a good enough excuse to not make pie crust. I ended up making apple sauce and some apple cobblers in my cast iron pans (what a mess! I won't use them again for that). Here's some pictures.
I collected some apples first.

 Then me and my sister peeled them and I cut them into fourths and cut out the cores.

 Here they are peeled:

 I threw them into a pot with (approximately) 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, a squirt of lemon juice, and some ground cinnamon. I think it is kind of neat how the stove looks purple in the picture.

 After a while... it gets mushy. This batch took about an hour. There were still a few lumps and chunks, but they were soft. I made over a gallon I think.

Hot apple sauce with vanilla ice cream... :-)

Here's one of the cobblers

 If you have any more recipes for apples, please share! Also any tips on taking pictures of food would be appreciated.

Making apple juice!

Yesterday I made some apple juice. I didn't use one of those apple squishers, because I don't have one. Instead, I used our Mehu Liisa that we got from a garage sale for $10 I think, almost new. They are about $200 from the store. Anyways, I went and collected good looking apples from the back yard, and cut them into fourths, just to make sure there weren't ant bad spots inside.

Next, I got out the Mehu Liisa. It uses steam to juice things.

The steamer has 3 main parts. The bottom holds the water, which is boiled. The next one has a funnel that directs the steam to the fruit basket, which is the top layer. The juice then drips back into the middle through little holes in the basket. It is then poured out through the hose. Here's a link to a diagram.
http://www.juiceland.co.uk/media/images/product_detail/steamjuicer_diagram.gif

The next step was to put the apples into the basket. I added some sugar.

 Then once the water is boiling, the fruit is put on and it steams for around an hour. The steamer can also make other things, like berries, vegetables, corn. Of course, the vegetables are not in as long, and just get soft instead of juiced.

 Here is what is left after an hour of steaming:

 Here is the result: apple juice!

About 3 pints.

 The apple juice was slightly syrupy, and I think next time I'll peel the apples and make apple sauce by steaming them just long enough to get soft. The juice isn't bad, though. I want to try some sort of berries next, maybe currants or something tart.

Another experiment I want to try is making peanut butter.
Well that's all for today.

New Griswold No. 5!

A few days ago I went to an antique store and picked up a new cast iron pan. It was $12, and they didn't want to negotiate on the price. Still, I bought it. I think it is my new favorite pan.
These were made until 1957, and I think this pan dates somewhere between 1937 and 1957. 

A recipe!

I have a recipe for you! I think I'm turning into quite the cook now. Here it is.

1 can of tuna
1 egg
some crackers

Crush the crackers and mix everything in a bowl, then fry it in little patties (I got two from this). The I put it between two halves of an English muffin and added some mayonnaise.
I didn't photograph the event, however.

Since this blog thing is called "Zak's Pictures" I might as well throw some in. They're unrelated to the tuna thing.

I don't invert the colors too much, so I decided to throw one in.

Handy tool

Safety and security on the World Wide Web

With internet safety and information security in mind, I made a Facebook account. I decided I would need a profile picture, but I did not want to put a easily identifiable picture of myself on the internet. I took some self portraits (harder than it might seem). I guess I'll share a few of the results here, so you aren't left with no pictures.

By the way, do you see any eyes in those holes? No siree, carefully painted black to make it unrecognizable (plus the eyeholes had more noise than an amusement park in them).

Some random thoughts, plus a few pictures

Lately I've been taking out the fiddle a bit every day, might as well get in practice before school starts. Mostly I've just been playing random things, but I try to get a few scales in too.
Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I finally bought an external hard drive to back up my pictures and other things. I spent $30 on the cheapest one, a 250 gb. It should be plenty of space for a while at least.
Another random thought, I think I'm going to have to figure out a way to enjoy school and homework, and then next school year will go fast. then it will be summer again.
Well, enough with my ramblings, this is probably the most I've written in one post.

Back from Michigan

Well, the pictures today don't follow any sort of theme or trend, they all are a bit different. I suppose they are all from Michigan, though.
I have also been thinking about getting a Facebook account, as it seems like a lot of people have thrown email to the wayside and use Facebook now. For some reason, I'm still a bit hesitant. What do you think? Is it worth it?

Anyways, here are the pictures.

Blueberries! Yum!

$0.49 ice cream

Thought I'd try one in black and white and gray