Sunday, October 18, 2009
Man, I have never eaten so many apples in my life!
This weekend, Stephan and I went to this lovely family-run apple orchard up in the Skagit Valley. I didn't take any pictures of the orchard since it was raining almost the whole time we were there (thank you, Seattle weather). We just decked out in our rain gear, with the expectation that we were going to get muddy and gross, so we might as well bring a change of clothes.
Even with the rain, though, the orchard was beautiful. It was surrounded on two sides by some lovely Cascade peaks, and to one other side by the creek, Jones creek, for which the orchard was named. We've been having a pretty beautiful autumn here this year, in terms of fall leaves, so the mountains were all gorgeous colors with mist inter-weaved between them. (Side note: I must be a Seattle-ite now...I'm even finding the rain pretty).
The orchard was stuffed with all sorts of apple varietals, most of which I had never seen before. The owners encourage you to pluck the apples off of the tree and taste as many as you want, and if you like what you taste, to go ahead and pick some to take home. Some of the apples were odd colors, or shapes, or textures. There were green apples that had pink flesh when you bit into them, other apples that were super juicy, and every, every apple that I tasted was perfectly crunchy. There were more flavors than I thought possible!
We picked a combination of apples that would keep well through the winter for Stephan's household, plus good eating and baking apples to use in the next two months. The ones I show here are the piddly 10lbs of apples that I came home with...in total we picked 80lbs of apples. (at $0.85 a pound, you can't go wrong).
Maybe I'll try and make an apple pie tonight :)
Addendum: I was feeling ambitious, so here's the pie:
4 comments:
That's a good looking pie! Mmmm...I could eat a piece of that right now!! :) Sounds like you had a nice time at the apple orchard despite the rain. What variety of apples did you get?
It was lovely! And I have to say, the pie was the best pie I've made yet. I used cold water this time (gasp!), but your same recipe for shortening and flour, and the crust was perfectly flaky. I got boatloads of compliments.
The apples are of mostly unknown variety. The orchard didn't have any signage by the trees, so we just went by taste. However, the owners did point out a few varietals, including the Melrose apples (x between a Jonathan apple and a Red Delicious) that we got to keep through the winter, and what I'm assuming are Macintosh varieties and other, random apples. For the most part, they all tasted good!
yumm, your pie looks wonderful! :)
We can have another one for thanksgiving! ;-)
Post a Comment