Brown Apple Slices: The Bane of Childhood

I just brought a lot of apples back from North Carolina. They are a favorite food around here, and I often send sliced apples and a cheese stick to school for Laura's snacktime. But she won't eat them if they've turned brown from oxidizing, and neither will Hank. You would think that someone who used to sneak dogfood out of the dog's bowl would not be quite so picky about his fruit.

I have only a few food tricks up my sleeve, but Alton Brown taught me that lemon or lime juice will keep fruit slices from turning brown. (I love Alton Brown, and I know that if neither of us were married we would be dating.) So what I do is slice and core the apple with one of those corer/wedger things and put the wedges straight into a baggie that I've squirted a few drops of lime juice into. Lemon juice works too, of course, but I have the bottle of lime juice around for cocktails. Then you press the air out of the baggie, close it up, and rub the apple pieces all around so they make contact with the juice. It takes so little juice that you can then just leave the slices in the bag and send it off as a snack. Or you can take those slices out and do another apple in the same baggie. Today I am cutting several apples to keep in the fridge as quick toddler food. The slices stay nice and unbrown for a long time.

Now, what I need is a trick for peeling apples. How does one do this in an elegant way, without a peeling machine? I do it the way someone who had never even seen an apple would do it if you handed her a knife and said, "Peel this." It's a pain. Sometimes I take the wedges that the corer/wedger makes and peel them individually. If I give my two year-old apple with a lot of peel on it, he will eat the apple, but keep a growing bolus of peel in his mouth, until he decides to spit it out, usually either on the couch or in my hand. Thanks, buddy! So I need a peeling trick. Lime juice on apples has been brought to you by Works for Me Wednesday. Go over there and check it out.