If an apple a day is good, how about 188?

A few weeks a go we helped the youth in our ward with caramel apples. While they carved pumpkins we made the caramel so all they had to do was dip them and then add goodies if they wanted to.  That evening we made about 67 apples.

Hurricane Sandy put us behind on our original schedule for making and delivering apples.  We had planned on making several large batches and delivering them to different areas in our ward on different days.  We were afraid to make them over the weekend in case we lost power.  Halloween arrived and we still had bags of apples and piles of ingredients.  I was pretty much over it as one thing after another seemed to work its way into the everyday living of life and apples never quite made it to the top of the list.

About 4pm Halloween afternoon we got started.  My intent was to start with 4 to 6 batches which should each yield about 15 apples.  I can get in over my head at times, try to do more in a day than humanly possible, but I'm not the only one. Matt won't admit this, but if I have a thought he has a dream, if I have a dream he has a vision and a plan to make it happen. He's learning to chill, but he can be pretty intense when he gets in the zone.  When it came to the caramel apples he was in the zone and ready to make it happen.

We have a great 8 quart soup pot that handles four batches of caramel, but when it gets to boiling it pushed the limits and it was sometimes a bit dangerous. Burning caramel hurts so bad when you get it on you.  Don't try this at home, take my word for it. Matt had a remedy.  Buy a pot that's twice as big.  Great idea.  Only thing is, Matt, who thinks if a lot is good,  a whole lot is a whole lot better.  Instead of 6 batches in our new pot, we made 8 batches. Again the pot was maxed out with bubbling caramel. I let Matt handle the pot.

7:45pm came along and we had been dipping apples for quite awhile and realized we were almost out of apples and we still had a ton of caramel. It was like someone had blessed the loaves and fishes and there seemed no end in sight. I was all for greasing a cake pan or two and sharing caramels along with our apples.  Matt soon had me headed for the store for 50 more apples.  He reminded me of my crazy list of 200 people I wanted to share apples with.  When all was said and done we had 188 caramel apples that night.
Our grand total, which included the apples we made with the youth was 303 caramel apples.

When we finally ran out of apples we had just enough caramel left to make a batch or caramel corn. Yum!

 Well we thought we were out of apples, but one some how escaped the cauldron.  Good thing.  We have a friend that believes caramel is a great waste on a good apple. We were able to deliver this special one to him.

On Halloween we delivered apples to the neighborhood, but it was too late to do anything else.

Thursday afternoon about 2pm we loaded up Matt's SUV and started sharing our apples.  We said a prayer and asked that we be able to do some good.  We prayed to be led to anyone we might have overlooked.  We had about 150 that needed to find a good home.  Earlier in the day I had split our ward into four areas and did my best to make a map for each area. As we drove we were led to a few families who weren't on our original list or map.

It would have been impossible without a semi to package the apples before we left home. Matt drove, I navigated and Hannah filled plates with the appropriate number of apples as we drove. Our first stop became one of our last stops since no one was home and we didn't think it was such a good idea to leave apples outside. It may have been a bit early, but we sang a few Christmas carols along with other family favorites.

We arrived home at 9pm after seven hours, over 100 miles, about 35 stops and with only a dozen apples left.  We weren't able to get everyone on our list, but we made a valiant effort.  We only missed about five families that we were hoping to reach.  On Sunday we shared the rest of the apples with the missionaries.  Mission accomplished.

I feel we did some good.

P.S. Stayed tuned for Matt's special recipe chocolate chip Christmas cookies.