Making homemade fruit leather

From the 1957 McCook Community College’s annual is this photograph of Santa Claus Lane and seniors, from left, John O’Brien, John Carpenter, Carol Kimball and Carolyn Andre. Annuals are available for research at the SWNGS library. Courtesy photo

In one of my earlier articles I wrote about my GG Grandfather, John C. Eckert, sending peach leather to his homesteading children in Nebraska who quite obviously had no fruit trees at the time. Peach or any other kind of fruit leather was made by boiling down the fruit to a thick concentrate. Then it was spread thinly and sun dried it on a piece of muslin cloth for several days until it was able to be peeled off the muslin and cut into pieces, the beginning of what we now call fruit roll-ups at the grocery store. A month ago I had a 5 pound bag of apples that we didn’t find crisp enough to eat and being my mother’s daughter, I wanted to do something with them. So, I washed and cored them, leaving the peel on, added a third of a cup of honey, some cinnamon and a tad bit of water and pressure cooked them to make sure the peels would be soft. Then I processed them in the food processor, lined cookie sheets with my parchment paper, spread the concoction on top, tapped to make sure it was even across the sheet and put it in the oven at 200 degrees till when I touched the layer, it was tacky but not wet. Drum roll please! Wonderful apple leather that made 4 cookie sheets worth for about $5.

On top of apples, fall has brought me more time at home to work on the hundreds of pictures I am still trying to organize from both of our parents. The pressure is on, because my upstairs middle bedroom is stuffed with boxes and the second story TV room floor has a 10’ circle of pictures sorted into family groups. (I sit on the floor and make my organized mess.) It would be fine if we never had company over the holidays but with 11 grandchildren and one great grand-daughter, luckily, that’s not going to happen.

There are new happenings in DNA and adoption that may well prove to be a great tool for those adoptees searches. It’s called Triangulation and as it becomes a more user friendly program, it should allow DNA to be entered and then instead of having to search through a multitude of results yourself, the program should triangulate your results with others to weed out the ones least likely to closely match your paternal line. Our resident DNA experts (of which I am not one) are excited to learn more so that they can share that skill with others.

I picked up the 1957 Chieftain (McCook College) Annual the other day to browse through. In it was this picture that shows one of the original Santa Clause Lane panels, the angel speaking to Mary. Pictured from left to right are: John O’Brien, John Carpenter, Carol Kimball and Carolyn Andre, all seniors at MCC.

This annual and many others are available for research at our library, 110 West C, Suite M-3. We have open library Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and members are there to help you unlock your genealogical past.