Spam, Spam, Cherry, Apples, and Spam

The past few weeks have been apple season here at the Rookery, with my two mature apple trees bearing their little heinies off. One of the cruel effects of apple processing is that for every gallon of apple juice I get, I end up with about 2 1/2 gallons of fiber-rich apple pulp, and that adds up fast. I have frozen it, baked it into bread and waffles, spread it on toast, and am considering patching a crack in the concrete slab out back with it. Mostly, though, I am dehydrating it. The great thing about apple pulp is that it is strong enough to make regular apple leather, and mild enough to use as a carrier pulp for making fruit leathers out of things that are normally too delicate or too expensive to make into fruit leather on their own. So far, I have mixed berry, strawberry, apple spice, mango and black raspberry all in an apple base, and they are absolutely delectible.

Then, there is the cherry. I don't know what went amiss with the bowl of cherry-apple puree, but something did. Gallons upon gallons of the other puree mixes dehydrated right up to and end product indistinguishable from commercial fruit leather, except by the absence of non-fruit crap ingredients. The cherry, on the other hand, has dehydrated into an end product nearly indistinguishable from a massaging gel shoe insole. Seriously, the texture is exactly the same. Only the flavor is different (I assume, considering I have not gnawed on my shoe insoles lately to test). The cherry is tasty enough, but the texture is hard to get past. Worse yet, I still have a loaf pan full of the raw cherry-apple mix. What dehydrates into something with the consistency of a Doctor Scholl's product starts off with a consistency of fruity Spam, and I am still working on a use for what is left.