I used to pick crab apples on the way home from primary school, stuffing my pockets with these tart little fruit. They are quite sour and it was probably equivalent the bravado displayed by kids when they buy sour confectionery nowadays. But cheaper.
As a memory thing, I have a crab apple tree at the back of the vegetable garden; partly for the fruit, partly as a shield from the neighbours. There is not a lot that you can do with crab apples. The jelly is nice but there is only so much you can eat. I pickled some one year and served them as garnishes with meat, especially pork. One year I made some wine with them. Which received popular acclaim for both flavour and colour. (It had some elderberries in it too.)
The other day, in memory of my childhood nibblings, I had a bowl of crab apples while I was working at my desk. They were tart, sharp and my teeth went furry, but full of memories.
Of late the birds have found the remainder of the crop: large, black evil-eyed kurrawongs, tiny little silver-eye finches, the ever present blackbirds and, recently, a few rainbow lorikeets (seen here broadening their diet with the birch seed catkins).
...
have you ever experimented with cider? can't be done decently w/o crab apples....
ReplyDeleteit must be lovely to have it there, bringing all of that life into your yard!
Ah you brought back memories of a huge crab apple tree, overhanging the footpath. We used to pick & eat the fruit on the way home from school. As you say, tart, & sharp- not really very nice, but somehow I continued to eat them?
ReplyDeleteI later had nightmares about the tree for many years? Very odd.
my brother, alex, and i would use crab apples as ammo for our homemade slingshots. he designed and created them. he's an engineer now, go figure. needless to say, crab apples hurt alot! he was a good shot, i wasn't!
ReplyDelete