Life-saving apple peeler

I want to thank my friend Susie/Sky for saving my life---well, a good share of it anyway. In our last marathon telephone conversation, we got on the subject of apples. I told her about my tree that produced 14 boxes this past year and how I'd spent hours and hours, peeling hundreds of apples from my supply for apple cobblers to give away as Christmas goodies.

"Don't you dare peel another apple," she emphatically instructed. "Get yourself an apple peeler." She even told me a site where I could order one. When the conversation had finished, I felt like I might even need to report back to her, just to let her know I'd followed her instructions.

Well, I'm reporting back today, and, yes, she has saved many hours in my future life.

I bought an apple peeler at Co-Op Country Store yesterday. Can't say I'd ever seen one before. It's quite the gizmo. Up until yesterday, I've expended hundreds of hours over my lifetime working a paring knife, chewing on my tongue (a primitive genetic trait) and peeling, peeling, peeling.

In fact, with all my peeling experience, I've decided that having lots of apples to process is about the same time-consuming experience as snapping too many garden peas. Seems like it's a lot easier and just as cost-saving to go buy frozen peas.

Apples are a little different. They cost more than peas.

I feel like a new woman today with my apple peeler. I brought it home yesterday afternoon, screwed it to the counter, practiced with three apples and then wondered how many hundreds of hours of my life could have been spent hiking, biking or riding my horse rather than sitting there, chewing away, and peeling and quartering those apples at a rate of about 30 per hour.

It takes a lot of apples to make sauce or cobbler. If I counted it all up, it could get downright discouraging----just like the amount of time I sit here staring at this computer while it takes 20 minutes to get going full speed ahead on some mornings.

When this happens, I think of all the stuff I could be doing rather than sitting, waiting, and hoping the stupid thing will get to work in the next second or two, which turns out to be the next minute or hour. This morning, for example, my lovely laptop took from 7:13 to 7:28 to get the email messages compacted and to allow me finally to get into the blogger site.

As yet, I don't know what to do about the computer gremlins, but I do know that with my new apple peeler, those remaining five boxes of apples stored out there in the new-old motorhome along with the "depression potatoes," are gonna get their due and in short order.

Besides the time-saving features, the little machine is kinda fun. There's a certain sadistic thrill that comes from rotating that handle and watching those neat little slices come falling off, all ready for cooking or drying.

I even practiced with a potato last night, and this morning Bill had the results sitting in a pan of water, all ready to dice up to cook with his Schwan's country sausage patties.

Life is gonna be good here at the Lovestead as our orchard continues to produce, and I happily take on the task of turning those lovely apples into desserts or jellies.

For those of you out there who have had apple peelers all along, I know you think I'm behind the times, just like I am at picking up on funny country music lyrics. I'll admit to being a bit slow on a lot of stuff, but when I make these discoveries, it's just like being a kid in a candy store. And, that's not a bad way to feel when you're an old geezer.

Gotta get going and head out to work with the apples----horses, that is. I wonder how a horse apple would do in my new peeler!