Fall Apple Picking

The week before last we had some Fall-ish weather for the first time, chilly with clear skies and that bright, slanting sunlight that feels worlds away from the sticky, hazy sun of summer.  For some reason Fall makes me more sentimental than most seasons, as though the memories made during that time of year are etched more deeply– a walk in Hyde Park, hiking to some castle in Germany, the buzz of students returning to classes, Halloween with doughnuts and cider.  I start itching to travel somewhere with cozy pastry shops and pubs, reminisce about college; and I am filled with a longing to drive to an orchard, fill a truck-bed with apples and take them home to make apple butter, press cider, and can pie filling.

I convinced Chesed, who had never canned anything before,  that the latter would be a good idea.  To my surprise, she found a u-pick orchard about an hour away free of the face-painting, petting zoos, hayrides, and other gimmicks they parade for city-folks-visiting-the-country around here.  It was perfect!  There were a couple of goats (I love goats, almost as much as monkeys), orchards, and a produce barn.  After petting the goats and watching them play king of the mountain on their walkway elevated about 20 feet above us (if you click on the picture you can see it better), we grabbed a wheelbarrow and got to work.  The Honey Crisps were by far the best apples we picked, but we threw in some other varieties to make it interesting.  Earlier I had read a sign that said you could get 20 cents off per pound if you picked over 20 lbs of apples, so we wanted to at least reach that mark.  When we went to check out, we found we in fact had EIGHTY pounds of apples.  On the way home we stopped at a little French bakery for a sandwich and a wonderful pastry– the perfect ending to our outing.

The following Thursday afternoon we filled my kitchen with apples and started canning pie filling.  Washing, peeling, slicing the apples in a processor, packing them into clean jars, pouring hot apple pie filling over them, wiping the rims, applying the boiled lids, and then putting them into a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Pouring the liquid pie filling over the sliced apples was a new method for me so hopefully the recipeturns out to be a good one (I added more of the nutmeg, cinnamon, and also some allspice).  In the midst of it, a girlfriend, Emily, stopped by with some fresh bread from the bakery she works for (which quickly became my lunch and dinner) and helped us with the peeling and slicing.  The following morning we got right to work on the apple butter and completed everything by the afternoon.  We used all but two apples, every jar sealed, and we only had two casualties– a couple of quart jars of apple pie filling that entered their bath too cold and broke inside the canner.

Because it’s unlikely that I will make it to either England or Germany in the next few weeks, I have just one request, and that is, that while I’m back home we make cider and home-made doughnuts in anticipation of Halloween!