Good Morning! This is a guest post from Daddy.
Last week I was a helper in Holly's kindergarten classroom, and I was lucky enough to be helping out on apple peeling day. Now, the classroom is a pretty hectic place, so I wasn't able to take any pictures during class, but when mommy picked her up after class, Holly wanted to show her the apple peeler, and there were a few other kids still hanging out, and so they got to process a few more apples and document it properly this time.
About the machine: This contraption looked like something Kafka would use to make an apple pie. It was truly medieval looking, but it worked great, at least with the firmer apples (We had some airy red delicious apple, and it mangled them much to the delight of the kids, so we switched back to the sturdier ones). You'd simply impale the apple on the spikes, turn the crank, aim the stem so it went through the little razor sharp ring. It was like a magic trick, it would peel, core and spiral slice the apple all at once. Mostly my job was to keep the kids away from the sharp parts of the machine and sometimes add a little oomph when they were spiking them, the kids were able to do the whole thing pretty much by themselves.
Here's holly doing a video demo:
After a bit of initial chaos, we got a pretty good assembly line going. I picked kids one at a time and they each got to peel an apple. So what did we do with 20 peeled and sliced apples? Well, the peeling machine was only half of the activity. The kids broke the apples into two halves. One half they carefully separated into slices which went into a neat looking dehydrator. It looked a lot like a stack of steamers at a dim sum restaurant. The other half they would crumble up into pieces and put into a steaming crock pot where it was slowly becoming applesauce. The kids really liked participating in the cooking and smelling the applesauce as it evolved.
By the end of it we had quite a system going. I was joined by another parent and so we were able to split up the peeling and cooking.
The kids couldn't get enough of the apple peeler. The long strips of apple peel were like a reward treat, they just loved them, and kept sneaking back to the table to grab more peels to munch on. Cutest moment of the whole morning was when two of the kids re-enacted the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp with some apple peel.
It was so much fun that I volunteered to come back next week and bake a couple of apple pies.
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