Would you invite a complete stranger round for dinner?
I’ve spent the weekend lurking at the fringes of an apple-processing industry. In the garden are two large apple trees, lately so bulging with fruit that some branches are brushing the ground. So when a friend popped by for a few days, it was just the manpower needed for the Herculean task of turning harvested apples into staggering quantities of jam, chutney and cake. Cue a three-strong team of frenzied apple industrialists, up to their elbows in it all weekend.
Me? Well, I did a bit. But I’m a novice. These guys are alchemists.
We must have cored, peeled, diced, sliced and grated nigh on a hundred apples – and still the trees are festooned with them. While the jam was bubbling away volcanically in the kitchen I went out to one of the trees, grabbed a branch and shook. (Thump plop thump thump bonk “Ow – f***.”). A few minutes of that, and I had a supermarket carrier-bag of apples..which is now on the path out the front of the house, affixed with a sign saying “For Pity’s Sake Please, Help Yourself”.
And there’s still more out there, waiting for a good breeze to bring it thumping down onto the lawn.
Unwanted fruit. Beloved by foragers when it’s on communal ground, but when it’s in our back gardens, we don’t quite know what to do. Foist it on the neighbours, or family members. Leave it outside for the public. Squash it into bags that take up precious freezer-space. Bung it into the composter, knowing we’re chucking away perfectly good food. Now, across the Pond they have very sensible food exchanges like Neighborhood Fruit or Veggietrader – but here we’re lacking similarly useful services, barring the hit-and-miss method of sticking an advert up on Freecycle to see what happens.
The best way to get rid of, say, too many apples is have an Apple Party.
An apple party is like a dinner party with friends, except at least half the dishes contain apple-originating foodstuffs. You supply these. Your guests supply the other ingredients. They turn up early afternoon and congregate somewhere assisted by alcohol for a few hours while you prepare the food, and then you all sit down and eat. Perfect. Job done.
(Or you can just drag someone round to help you make acres of jam, chutney and cake that will fill every corner of the house for the next 6 months. Hey, that works too).
Now.
I saw all this going on from the sidelines, and I thought back to the times recently where I’ve entertained guests who have been sleeping on the couch (couch-surfers in the unregistered sense). And I remembered how much fun evening meals were – a chance to get to know the other person without the whole tour-guide thing getting in the way.
So here’s my idea. You don’t offer passers-by a place to sleep…but you do offer them a meal.
I’m going to call it…
Meal-Surfing.
Cooks: want to meet fun new people, show off your culinary skills and, just perhaps, shift some of your homemade jam?
Travelers: hate feeling you’ve seen somewhere new but entirely missed its residents? Here’s a way to fill your traveling social calendar and your stomach.
The meals work like this. Either guests can bring some kind of beverage or nibbly snackstuff (ideally one representing where they’ve come from) or they can simply turn up and be wonderful guests. The meal starts and ends at a pre-agreed time, so the host has the option of extending the fun or prolonging the agony no further.
And the organizing of it? Let’s say it works like the brilliantly organized CouchSurfing.org – you register, you vet, you make a booking, you attend, you enthuse in a review. The website covers references and guest-credibility, and helps chefs choose an appropriate menu (all guests must list any dietary requirements on their website profile). Potential hosts advertise meal-slots. Potential guests apply for them.
And the essence of the experience is sitting down to a meal with strangers that just might become good friends.
A meal made in heaven.
(Primarily from apples).
Images: *clairity* and Zach Klein.
This sounds very a-peeling Mike…..
A very sociable idea as long as you like apples then?
The key is to introduce apple products in the correct order. First, 70% proof apple scrumpy – then everything else. That way, it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like apples. Hell, it doesn’t matter if they’re *allergic* to them, they still won’t be aware of it.
Contemptible pun, by the way. Fine work.
Why mess about with chutney and jam when you can make dodgy scrumpy?
I am in complete agreement, as you can see in the previous comment.
Why not store them (you must know someone with a garage or a high up cupboard that’s a pain to use day to day) and then you have recourse to apple pie all year round? That’s where my mum and dad’s go. And their back garden used to be an orchard. Still is, sort of, except that as the apple trees are >100 years old some of them are starting to die. Still, they manage to eat nine or ten trees worth of apple each year without having to give any away.
That’s a lot of apples….
We have a few bags here, and we’re storing them and using them up bit by bit, but after a couple of weeks some of them are getting distinctly…foxed. And squishy.
The best method would be chopping up and freezing tons of ‘em, hence guaranteeing apple pie all year round – but we don’t have the freezer space, sadly.
However, as the following post shows, we’ve found a way of shifting them onwards!
I love it! Count me in.
Next time you’re in the area, I’ll remember you said that.
it’ll never work. you have been promising to cook curry for a good 5 years now, still not happened. how can some poor, unsuspecting, tourist be expected to wait that long for a meal?
how?
No, I wouldn’t act like that with visitors. Only with you.
Having said that, point noted. I believe that curry is indeed owed. Ahem.
I have the story of “Stone Soup” in my head from this. Anyway, it sounds like an idea that could work just as well as couch-surfing. Especially as you wouldn’t necessarily have to travel much to do it.
Yes, it would work as a way to get to know folk where you live or nearby, as well as when you’re travelling. Done right, it might make entire cities feel neighbourly…
oh, an apple party! what a fun way to gather with people (friends and strangers alike) and basically get sick off these fruits.
too bad you’re all the way over theres.. and i’m all the ways over here. {pout}
I’ve been feeding my couchsurfers. Was I not supposed to? Come eat pasta and duck, bring apples. I have none of my own, only grapes.
Great idea!
Oh yeah, and scrumping party round at your place then? Scrumpy scrumptious scrumpage…
How lovely – the images of apple-festooned trees, apple parties, and the idea of meal exchange. Let a stranger sleep on my couch? I think not, unless they brought presents*. But I dream of dinner parties; until I find some friends I might just have to resort to feeding strangers.
*not severed heads