Saturation point has been reached. I have had two crumbles and three Eve's puddings in the last fortnight. I have had apple sauce on my porridge each morning, and apples after lunch. I am living the dream; I am eating seasonally. And it's becoming a drag.
There are two apple trees on my allotment, one cooker and one eater. That doesn't sound like much, but they are big, healthy old trees and I've done everything I can to produce a monster crop. Here it comes now: big, beautiful apples, carted back from the allotment in pushchairs, wheelbarrows and rucksacks.
Yes, I could give them away, but giving apples away in September is the horticultural equivalent of the half-price Easter egg sale two days after Easter. No one wants them. My allotment, my street, is brimful of apples; curtains may twitch but doors remain shut. My apple wheelbarrow must move on.
And besides, I've put all that work into them – I want to reap the rewards myself. Just, you know, not right now. What I need to do is preserve them. But how, exactly?
▶ There's plain storage, of course: stack them in crates and put them away in a cool, dry cellar until you can face them again. Late-maturing apples store best. Suitable dessert apples include Barnack Beauty, Ashmead's Kernel (pick early October, eat from December) and Sunset (pick late September, eat from October to December). Cooking varieties you can store include Bramley's Seedling, Newton Wonder and Annie Elizabeth.
▶ You can also freeze apple puree, coulis or juice (sweet apples are best), but in my house this would only see the light of day again at the next defrosting.
▶ Drying appeals, though, and can be done in the oven by coring, slicing and then baking your harvest on a tray for six hours at 160C, gas mark 3. Try High Cross and George's Red, which do not brown easily.
▶ But I think I'm going to go for bottling. Cox's apples are suitably sweet. In the US, bottling apple sauce is a tradition. You make your sauce, put it into preserving jars and then boil these in a big pot of water for several hours. The sauce is then "sealed", and can be used in the depths of winter as a filling for pies, topped with crumble and accompanied by custard, or for pouring hot over ice-cream. Yum.
