Dried Apple Pie

Last time I mail-ordered bulk spices, I also bought dried apples. They're so expensive in the store, and we like them so much. When the box arrived, we discovered that the apples were not sweetened -- just dried. Up till then, I'd never paid attention to the fact that most grocery-store dried apples were laced with sweeteners.

But it was okay that these were unsweetened, because these were healthier and still tasted good. The one thing I didn't like, though, was that the apples were sliced and dried. That's it -- just sliced. Not cored. Stems still attached. I guess I'm too picky: I found that kinda unappetizing. So those apples have been sitting around for quite a while, not getting gobbled down at the rate I expected.

So I came up with a plan. Pie out of dried apples. I threw a big pile of dried apples into a saucepan, barely covered them with water, and then simmered them for about 20 minutes. Then I could use the rehydrated apples in any ol' pie recipe. The water for simmering was used the next morning for cooking oatmeal.

The pie tasted great. I'm not too fond of finding seeds in the pie, but I don't think that's a big enough deterrent to making another dried-apple pie.