More apples

Next door have had a shitter of a week at work and need distraction. P has brought massive amounts of apples over from his mum's orchard where they had been destined to rot on the compost heap. We invite him and his wife B over for an Apple Sunday. We set up on the patio and process dizzying amounts of apples – cutting them into four pieces, checking for rot and creepy-crawlies, then sending them through the scratter. The pomace is loaded into pillow cases and squeezed by the cider press and after some minor engineering adjustments, the juice runs out where it should. The neighbours can't get enough of this – the juice is amazing and very tasty. 

 

The doorbell rings and P's sister and her hubby arrive. We push beer bottles and wine glasses and allotment quiches into people's hands. The juice keeps on trickling into the vat; the spent pomace goes in the compost dalek.

I'm mostly in the kitchen that afternoon, processing, stirring in ascorbic acid powder, sweetening where I think the juice is too tart, pasteurising litre upon litre. Occasionally someone sticks their head through the kitchen door and asks if I'm alright and do I need any help. But I am alright where I am and quite like being on the sidelines a little. In any case I'm also too self-conscious about the grotty state of our kitchen to accept help (as per usual, I had omitted to clean the kitchen floor properly before inviting our neighbours over).

OH has sequestered two further demijohns so that's another 10 litres of juice that will hopefully, over time, become cider.

The neighbours roll back next door, sticky, slightly sozzled, clutching their freshly pasteurised bottles of apple juice. I heave a great sigh in the downstairs loo because I can finally release a thunderous fart, a byproduct of drinking too much of the unpasteurised stuff.