Homemade apple corer—it works!

Karla was preparing the stuffing for cored apples when she discovered that our corer was not to be found. Tom to the rescue—we’ll use a hole saw instead!



I boiled the saw first to get rid of the lurking crud inside, cooled it off, then used pliers to poke it into the first apple. Success! But the core remained in the apple.




 

Not to worry. Use a wide flat butter knife blade that gets poked down the center of the cored part and twist it as if loosening a screw.






 

The core pops loose at its bottom and comes out with ease. 











Then the hole gets stuffed with things (including brown sugar! which we almost never eat!), and the apples are arranged in a baking dish ready for the oven.

You HAVE been warned!

That seems to be the message on the power cord of our fake Christmas tree. There are—count ‘em—NINE labels, each with a dire message regarding your personal safety if you ignore any of the warnings. One of them says: This is an electric product—not a toy! Whoa. I’ll try not to play with it or put it in my mouth. Or take a shower with its cord around my neck and plugged in to a thousand-volt circuit.
Hm-m-m—neither of those activities is listed on any of the labels. I smell the potential of a lawsuit here....

Digging a big hole when you have plenty of time

Karla is standing in a hole made by a pine tree (most likely) several decades ago. Starting as a mere nut, the tree grew really tall, then died and fell to the ground, its roots pulling up a whole lot of dirt and making a really big hole.

As time went on, the tree's body slowly disappeared except for a very few pieces and a mound of composted wood and soil. Nice stuff for planting.

So the next time you need a big hole and have a few centuries to wait for it to be dug, plant a pine nut.