We had our last Kids in the Garden session today.  Before I tell you about it I’m going to share with your some recipe’s we made:

Cucumber-Tomatillo Salsa

INGREDIENTS

1 cucumber 

½ small onion 

3 tablespoons lime juice

4 tomatillos

1 small jalapeño chili

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

A pinch of salt

PREPARATION

Combine all ingredients in food processor.  Pulse until finely chopped.  Serve with tortilla chips.

We used a mild Fooled You jalapeno for the kids, but I added a regular jalapeno to the leftovers.  Yum!

During the 2011 Apple Season a good friend of ours, Cory of Friends in Photography, made multiple trips out to our orchard to take pictures for a photo story of the orchard.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to give you glimpses as some of these pictures and hopefully help ‘tell you the story’ of how things are done around the orchard. 

Step 1:  Set up. 

We pre-heat the caramel in an insulated box that Jared created that utilizes the same hot water we use to heat our house from our wood stove.  It works so well and saves us a lot of timing heating the caramel to the perfect temperature.  Before we start making the caramel apples we get everything all set up so our process runs as smoothly as possible.  We don’t start caramel apple-ing typically until our girls are in bed…but as you can see – Pip wasn’t quite as cooperative as the older two.   So we set up the apples – stems up for Jared (or whomever) to poke the sticks into, caramel simmering, commercial size baking sheets out and sprayed (we use two), nuts out, and empty trays ready.  Step 2: Sticking

Jared can put the sticks in with his bare hands but most of us need something between the stick and our palm like a brace or wrist guard.  Step 3:  Dipping

Once everything’s set up, the apples are ‘stuck’ and the caramel is at the perfect temperature and consistency the dipping begins.  Jared is by far the most efficient dipper in the family.  He is constantly going and has the timing down perfectly.  You did the number of caramel apples you think you can get through before it’s time to nut them.  We put them on the first tray to cool and have the excess caramel drip off.   Step 4: Nutting & Plains

At the perfect time – when the caramel is cool – but not cool it’s time for nutting.  If you do this step too soon you have a sticky mess.  If you wait too long – it’s really hard to get the nuts to stick.  When I do the apple dipping I can usually dip about 5 to 5 apples before I have to start nutting.  Jared can do about 10 to 12 – much more efficient.  You can also see that Jared is excellent at covering the ENTIRE apple with nuts! 

The larger apples on the first tray go to the second tray for further cooling.  These will be plain caramel apples.  If we package them before they’ve cooled off the caramel tends to stick in the package instead of onto the apple.  Our goal is to make the perfect caramel apple so you keep coming back – again and again, year after year to enjoy one of those delicious treats.  Step 5:  Packaging

Once the caramel apples are nutted or cool enough we place them in the clam shells.  These lay out flat and then snap together once the apple is placed.  Step 6:  Labeling

Next – we close our clam shells up with our label.  This tells you what you’re buying, who made it (Lapacek’s Orchard LLC) and the ingredients that can be found in it.  We used to staple all our packages shut but we’ve found this works much better and eliminates a step.   

Step 7:  Eating and Enjoying

The final step to the process is to see our customers eating and enjoying their very own, delicious, huge caramel apple.  They’re so good they even made the magazine ‘Splash’ as a local food favorite.  

The focus of Kids in the Garden this week was CORN!  I’m sure most of you know it hasn’t been a good year around here for corn but we were pleasantly surprised by how well our sweet corn turned out.

Before we get to the corn fun we had to head out and check on the rest of the gardens.  First stop – measure the sunflowers.  They have GROWN!  The one above measured in at 81-inches!Diane and Tyler measured some newly planted baby sunflowers and it was 5-inches.  I can’t wait to see how much it grows by next week!

At this point in the day I left the group to Diane because the girls, I and Jared were heading out to a Betty Lou Cruise (thanks Aunt Karma!) for some fun before the season gets too crazy.  I’m going to narrate the rest of the day by the pictures from Diane’s camera but if there’s anything Diane wants to add I’m sure she’ll chime in once this is up!Diane brought the kids to the ‘north’ gardens and they checked out how the pumpkins were progressing.  I heard that our ‘triangle’ pumpkin is going to be pretty sweet.  Then Diane brought the kids to our little corn field and they picked some sweet corn for a boil. 

Goats LOVE husks so the kids fed the goats the corn husks before adding them into the boiling water.  Frank was the ‘chef’ for the day and boiled some delicious sweet corn for the kids to try.  Even the mom’s enjoyed the spoils this time around!  This is one of those things we really wanted to expose the kids to this summer.  They went out to the field and PICKED the corn themselves (after watching it grow all summer), PEELED the husks off and fed them to the goat, COOKED (well Frank cooked, but they saw what was happening) and then got to EAT the corn!  They were involved in the entire process of the food they ate – what fun!Little Kelin looks like she’s loving those yummy baby tomatoes!    And of course the kiiddo’s got to meet the new kitties.   

Have you ever seen any child that happy about Broccoli?  (maybe it was something else)…

Just one week left of Kids in the Garden 2012.  We have a really fun surprise planned for them!  Can’t wait!

Can it really get any better? 

photo by Funky Monkey Photography

Jared and I were up late deep frying and sugar & cinnamon-ing some delicious apple cider donuts for you all to enjoy today!  I hope you have a few minutes to run to the orchard – grab a bag (or 3) of donuts, pick some raspberries and get your first bag of this season’s delicious apples!

photo by Funky Monkey Photography