The fragrant scent of toasted late summer vegetation swam lazily through the air of where I collected the my little batch of crab apples. Hundreds of dusted garnets laden down the old tree by the trailside. They hung above close above my head as I bobbed, stooped, checked, and tossed each plump little morsel either from the tree or ground into either my basket or returned to nature due to blemish. Having begun opening my eyes to the world of where our food comes and came from, I had set out that day to collect some apples for a recipe I had in mind to try. I paid close attention to which trees nearby might be apples, and might produce fruit suitable for this purpose. I made note of where I saw the trees blooming, since it is easier to find flowers than green fruit, then I waited until they began to fall from the tree (apples start ripening around mid August here in Colorado). I did have to try going to a few different trees before I found ones with suitable apples.

Crabapple Butter

Recipe
Cook time: 1-3 hours (depending on batch size)
Prep time: 15 mins (or more depending on batch and apple size)

Recommended cookware
-Food Mill (or wire mesh to push the sauce through, but that’s a pain)

Use the ingredient ratio below to fit your apple quantity. If your apples are exceptionally tart or sweet you should adjust how much sugar according to taste. My crab apples were 1-2″ diameter, around the juiciness of a honey crisp, and a just bit more tart than a granny smith.

Ingredients – Bare Bones
1 cup Apples (Pick your own quantity and measure once you have have cooked the apples down)
1 cup sugar (either works, I used brown)
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
THE ZAZZ– Extras for more balance and robust sauce
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp Vanilla
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp molasses

Prep: Take the apples and Wash, Destem, Halve/quarter, and cut off flower buds.
Cook: Simmer apples with enough water to cover. Cook until squishy, stirring every 7-10 minutes. Mash with a beater.
Either push through a wire mesh(painful), eat it with the bits(not advised), or put through a food mill for final texture.
Put back over heat, add spices and water to get whatever level of thickness to the sauce you want (great part is that errors on water don’t matter just boil it off or add more!).

I loosely followed and combined the recipes in this video and these blogs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma5BA-2jm7A
https://www.mamashomestead.com/crab-apple-butter/
https://www.myfrugalhome.com/crabapple-butter-recipe/
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a95440/how-to-make-apple-butter/

Humankind and Malus go far, far back, so much so that it is quite fitting that it is pronunciation is so close to malice.
Since before we were human we have gathered and stored food for future consumption. Apple butter, jerky, pemmican, dried fruits, sushi, and even grains themselves were developed as systems of food storage for when times were not plentiful.

Unfortunately, some of our best preservation crops were nearly or completely destroyed before the 1950’s. I speak mainly to two events instituted by the United States at the time. These events being the destruction of old growth American cider apple orchards and vineyards, and before that the destruction of Native American food systems.

Most Americans will know of prohibition, the 1920’s anti-alcohol movement, though many do not know the significant change in palette that it had on the (north) American people. As orchards and vineyards came under scrutiny as the source of the illicit good, and although some managed to survive the majority who were not marketable to immediate consumption were slowly erased from production.

This was the end of the American cider and wine industry for many decades, as the waves of fresh German and Scottish immigrants brought a thirst and knowledge of beer and whiskey, of which required no long lived woody plant years of care to produce, but rather turned out great quantities each year on fresh frontier soils. There are many reasons for why wine bounced back faster as an industry(Not getting into that!). Cider has recently been on the rise, and has gained significant market value since 2015. I would recommend trying your local cidery, as the flavors they are able to experiment with a a great break from what is traditionally available in beers. In my, and at least a few others’ opinion, Cider is one of if not the most American alcoholic(or NA) beverages.

Sometime in the future I plan to make a batch or a few of apple cider, but for this year I’ll stick to apple butter
My next post I will expand on further on the American history with and against their native plants and animals.

The post A Universal Task first appeared on My Blog.

Cherry this, cherry that, what’s with your cherry spat?

Just on the south side of Denver runs Cherry Creek. As a transplant, my first experience with this sliver of the old world, was zipping along the paved Cherry Creek Trail as my daily commute. I was relatively ignorant of what plants grew in and around Denver, apart from a Choke Cherry, Crab Apple or Maple. So to, in the early days of Denver there was little thought was given to the native fauna, since Cherry Creek was a large focus of the early gold rush named the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in 1858 and 1859.

It was only after I had gone out of my way to seek out genuine horticulture information and information of American Indians that I found out how limited my view had been. For centuries Native Americans cultivated a wide variety of Prunus species along waterways throughout the US, Cherry Creek being no different. When the settlers from the east moved in they found the streambeds lined with many Prunus varieties. On the small side there were Prunus avium, cerasus, and pumila. On the larger side were Prunus virginiana, and angustifolia.

And these are just the ones we know of, cultivars that survived years of neglect and mistreatment, from modern day Mexico to Canada; Native American use of plums/cherries was near universal. An early settler George Catlin wrote, “our progress was oftentimes completely arrested by hundreds of acres of small plum trees…every bush that was in sight was so loaded with the weight of its…fruit, that they were in many instances literally without leaves on their branches, and quite bent to the ground”. Though settlers simply attributed it to the land being fertile, this was a methodical and deliberate active and passive cultivation that occurred across North America.

Dried, Spiced, Jellied, Jammed, Preserves, Pemmican, Pastries, Puddings; Just as you can use a Asian/European plum or cherry so to can you use a native plum or cherry. In fact due to the more hardy and wild nature of the plants, the fruits are generally packed with flavor and nutrients(varying by location of course). Some are good for eating, but most need some doctoring to be palatable, I mean hey nothing good for you starts out tasting like a sugar cube.

More than just being seen on the roadside, these are vital genetic material for use as rootstock for modern orchards. Not to mention their use for creating new fruits as they hybridize readily both with Native species and European species. Though just as with the bison, and settlers seeking to starve the Native Americans, so to did they harvest great quantities of American Indian orchards and market it domestically and abroad as “American Cherry”.

What someone might think of a just a simple fragrant plant, can be far more fair more impactful that one might initially imagine. And this is just scratching the surface.

The post Native Prunus first appeared on My Blog.

Marks of the Ancient Enemy, Capitol Reef National Park

Approximately 2,000 years ago, Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan people began to feats of agriculture of corn, beans, squash, grains, and trees incorporating them into their hunter-gatherer lifestyles. As they did, they left art and artifacts along the cliffs throughout much of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. Petroglyph panels scattered throughout these states depict ancient stature and stories of these people who lived in the areas from approximately 300-1300 Common Era (CE).

The Hopi Tribe calls them the People of Long Ago, the Hisatsinom. To the Paiute Tribe, they are known as the Nengwoots, the People Who Lived the Old Ways. Their most prosperous time was from 600 to 1200 C.E. Archeologists call them the Fremont Culture, for the Fremont River canyon where they were first identified as a distinct group. They were not the first human group to inhabit this area, not would they be the last in pre-history.

The Fremont peoples moved in small groups, encountering others and residing or bringing them along with them for periods of time. Gradually these groups merged and dispersed, repeating this process continually in a practice known as residential cycling. This reshuffling continued for thousands of years and eventually led into today’s tribal groups. Oral histories associate the Fremont Culture with the Hopi, Zuni, and Paiute. What is now Capitol Reef is also part of the historic Ute territory and Navajo histories link them to the Capitol Reef area as well.

The original homes were pit houses. Later, as the populations grew, they began to build elaborate cities with apartments. Some of these houses were built into cliff sides, exemplified by sites such as Mesa Verde. But just as Anasazi and Fremont civilization reached their heights, they suffered a sudden collapsed. The amazing cliff houses were abandoned and the people scattered across the Midwest. There are many theories about what happened, be it floods, soil erosion, disease, climate change, or human conflict. However, to this day there is no clear answer, other than, they moved on and other cultures developed in their absence. Though every person is long forgotten and obscured by time, their perspectives are gleaned by the creative works, forgotten places, and lost objects of value left behind.

The post Ancient Enemy first appeared on My Blog.