Growing up in Hawai’i we didn’t do much in the way of preserving food.  Why get hot and sticky and grumpy making jams and jellies when there is so much fresh fruit available all year long?

But I’ve always loved the idea of making preserves, and one of the American things I miss here in NZ is apple butter.

This autumn (which is March here in NZ) I was on a walk with a friend when we discovered an apple tree just loaded with apples growing wild in a public preserve.

Now, the Venn diagram of people who are my friends and people who will enthusiastically scramble down a muddy slope (or would if their mobility allowed it) to pick wild apples is pretty much a circle.

So, while I held on to her dogs lead, my friend did just that, and came back with two bags full of perfectly ripe, amazingly fragrant apples.

And they were SO good.

Either the apple that got tossed there and sprouted was true to seed, grew a fantastically lucky sport, or was purposely planted, because these apples were delicious and good for everything.  Tart, but not too tart.  Beautifully flavourful.  Crisp and firm, but cooked down to the perfect texture.  Their scent was the absolute essence of apple smell and would make autumn-themed candlemakers green with envy.

I made apple cake and apple pie and ate far more than one apple a day.

Then I got excited, and went back for more apples with different friends.  (and confirmed that a new friend was definitely my kind of friend, because she was SO excited about apple picking!)

We figure out the perfect bags for picking, and rope systems for making the hillside safer.  I took clippers so I could cut through some of the invasive vines on the hillside and give back to the great outdoors.

We picked, and picked, going back every few weeks for more apples, because there were SO MANY apples.  I discovered that 13 kilos of apples is exactly the amount I can carry for a kilometer back to the car without seriously thinking about abandoning some.

And other people picked to.  We met them at the tree, and going back from it with bags full of apples.  And still the apples fell until the slope below them was littered with hundreds and hundreds of apples.

In addition to eating apples I gave them away to friends.  Then one friend and I got excited and embarked on the great apple butter making autumn of 2025.

We peeled and cut the first batch by hand, peeling and cutting and sharing stories.

Then I got clever, and ordered an apple peeler and corer.

Let me tell you, an apple peeler is basically the adult version of the best toy ever.  Absolutely everyone who tried it squealed with delight the first time they peeled a perfect apple.

Mine is just a cheap crappy made-in-China one, because I wasn’t sure if I would use it or like it, but now that I know the delights of an apple peeler I’m going to invest in a good one once I can no longer fix and sharpen and jerry-rig this one into working order (it really is very cheaply made).

But cheap or not, it was satisfying as heck and seriously sped up the process.  We made a big pot of apple butter every weekend for four weekends in a row.

The fourth week was a little exciting.  Wellington had a windstorm.  A windstorm serious enough to make even Wellington nervous, with Cat 4 hurricane speed winds.  We all got sent home from work, and for weeks after the storm the south side of every tree around town was brown and dead, scoured by salt laden winds.

I went back to check on the tree after the storm, and every last apple was on the ground save 6 poor battered specimens.  Just look at this scarred survivor!

But scarred or not, it was delicious, and helped make one last batch of apple butter.

It’s been delightful to be able to give people who give me preserves every year something in return.  It’s also very fun to introduce Kiwis to apple butter.  One described it as ‘like apple pie in a jar.’  Perfect!

It’s also been very interesting to find out which fellow American immigrants are familiar with it or not.  Turns out its not as universally known as I’d assumed.

It was also nice to do something that wasn’t Scroop or fixing my house related.  I’m trying to improve my work-life balance.

And finally, for another nice work-life balance thing, a Connie update.

I have extremely exciting news on the Connie front…

She touched me!  Voluntarily!

She’s getting noticeably more relaxed and comfortable with me by the day: spending more and more time in the same room, playing in front of me, and just hanging out close to me.  When she hangs out close to me she is clearly very interested in what I’m doing, and what I’m about.  It’s like she wants to be friends but isn’t quite ready to make the move.

Last Thursday night I was sitting on the couch, legs tucked up, working, when she came and settled herself on the pile curtains I’d been putting pinch pleats into and had abandoned on the floor.

I slowly reached out my hand and hung it over the side of the couch, palm out.  She looked at it with interest, and then got up and sniffed it.

I would have been thrilled with just that, but there was more…

She put her paw right in the middle of my palm, so she could rest her weight on it and stand on her hind legs and sniff more of me.

I nearly died of happiness.

And then she just calmly settled back down into the curtains, instead of freaking out at her bravery and bolting.

So I took a photo:

Soon!  Soon she will allow a pat.  I can feel it.