Crab Apples

The kidlets have been using the crab apples to cook in the sandbox.  They've made a lot of versions of cherry pot pie.  I'm all about cooking with fallen fruit in the sand box.  When I was small, I used to wait with great anticipation for fall, when the first frost came and would ruin all the produce in my mother's garden.  I'd gather up all the rotten tomatoes and soggy cucumbers and dead stalks and stems of vegetables and flowers, and cook all kinds of macabre versions of vegetable soup.  Every evening for about a week I'd come inside reeking of rotten vegetables, and my mother would pretty much hold her nose and throw me in the bathtub.  So, these crab apples, you see, are really rather mild, no matter what my husband thinks.  Even when they are fermenting, the smell is nothing compared to ten day old cucumber mush.