I have been busy, busy the last couple of days!  Remember all that fruit I told you about at the end of last week?  Well, I’ve been dealing with it, and here’s what I’ve done with some of it. 

I learned something very useful:  you can keep pears and apples for long term storage without refrigeration  (if the weather isn’t too hot) by wrapping each apple or pear in a piece of paper.  I took a bunch of newspaper from the recycling pile, ripped it in appropriate sized pieces, and put my younger kids to work. 🙂

They went through the boxes, and pulled out only fruit that was unbruised, withoug marks of any kind that could lead to spoilage.  They sat there wrapping while listening to their book on cd – good multi tasking.  I’ve lost track of how many pounds we’ve used for what, but we have a box of wrapped pears and another of apples, with a lot more apples still left to deal with. 

In the winter this would serve to keep them for a really long time – I’ve kept apples in my basement for over a month in the winter with no problem, but never knew about wrapping them before.

Avivah