Currently available for presale from Tamworth Distilling...
I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had
deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour
that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty
of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my
heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I
rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my
bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.
Mary Shelley
We found some of this today and it's insane.
A Halloween drink for sure.
Reed’s Spiced Apple Ginger Brew was our fifth creation,
and is a Jamaican recipe for homemade ginger ale using 8 grams of fresh
ginger root, apple and lemon juice, honey, herbs and spices. It is 50%
fruit juice.
A long time ago, and three jobs ago, my boss asked me to do her a favor. It was her turn to visit her son's daycare for some kind of parent show-and-tell silliness. Being a boss and someone who liked to delegate personal tasks to her coworkers (like her Christmas shopping), she called me into her office and ordered me to do her a huge favor. Mind you, I was much younger then and much less rigid and MUCH less caustic and callous. She remembered me telling some coworkers about shrunken apple heads and thought this would be a great thing to show the daycare kids. I kindly protested informing her that it required the use of sharp instruments. She informed me that I would be doing the cutting, that I would skin the apples and take face requests from each child (I think Michelangelo started out this way). I'm surprised she didn't make me buy the three dozen apples and other supplies (though I should go back and check my old pay stub).
So it's the morning of the big show and I figure I'll wear a button-up vest and a bow tie... You know, for kids. My coworkers called me Chester the Molester.
So off to the daycare I go, without my boss. SHE MADE ME GO ALONE. I entered the building with a big bag of apples, a bottle of vinegar, and a collection of knives. I should have taken hostages. But I went in and faced a room full of kids excited that some weirdo just showed up with knives. I hope I said something like "I'm Joey's mother's slave-man, and when you grow up and work in the real world, you'll be juuuust like meeeeee."
So I explain what I'm about to do and the kids start shouting their requests: "GIANT EYES ON MINE!" "HUGE MOUTH ON MINE!" "SHARP TEEEEEETH ON MINE!" And I nervously (for I was truly nervous in that setting) carved their little apples for them. After each was carved, I would have each child take their apple and roll it around in a bowl of vinegar. It's supposed to prevent mold as the apple dries in the sun (lemon juice works too). So one kid starts licking the vinegar off his apple...which causes all the other kids to do the same. Then the screaming starts as they react to the unholy flavor of the cheapest vinegar on the market. I can see that this is some kind of act beings that most of them are laugh-screaming. I remember saying "p..p...please-don't-do-that" very quietly to the horde. They ignored Uncle Chester's requests.
I left the daycare center after all the kids balanced their freshly-carved heads on the tops of small plastic cups along the window sill. From what I remember, my boss was very pleased with me, and I think the kids had fun.
My mother still has the apples we carved as kids tucked away in an old box of Halloween decorations in her attic. Hopefully some of those kids kept theirs. I'd like to think some young adult visiting their folks during the holidays opens an old drawer in their old room and takes out a prune-sized fruity head and says "Ewwwww...remember THIS thing?!"
Alternative to cider and the trash can - turning rotten apples into applelanterns.
Thanks, Mark, these photos are GREAT.
Some really great apple heads in this video. Martha mentions how an earlier batch of apples wasn't treated with salt and lemon juice during the drying process and therefore ended up ruined by mold. I'd hate to be the guy that forgot that step. He's probably unemployed now (or worse).
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty- pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.
Image source.
Treacle?
Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees. In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees. Dog jumped. Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted. No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October!
