Here it is, mid-October and I am finally wearing a sweater. A very light sweater, I admit, but it has two long sleeves and I pulled it on over my head. I am ready for the great apple gathering.
You can never have too many apples. I love having a big bowl of apples on the table in the kitchen. It looks artful and smells wonderful. It is less expensive than cut flowers, and is right there, out in the open, when I wander helplessly into the kitchen looking for something to gnaw on. Obnoxiously, some people say that apples are nature’s dental floss; how prosaic and demeaning for the noble apple, which has been captured in language that is so much more romantic and transporting.
Read these names, and see if you don’t suddenly have a yen to wander into your own kitchen to rustle up a sweet snack:
Allen’s Everlasting apple
Ambrosia apple
Beautiful Arcade apple
Beauty of Bath apple
Bedfordshire Foundling apple
Bloody Ploughman apple
Brown Snout apple
Buckingham apple – Pale yellow flushed and mottled with red, and striped and blushed with
bright red. The surface is covered with white dots. Shape is oblate and somewhat
irregular with tough thick skin is tough and flesh juicy, yellow, crisp and sprightly
subacid. It has a small core and a short stalk.*
Catshead apple
Cheddar Cross apple
Coeur de Boeuf apple
D’Arcy Spice apple
Doctor Harvey apple
Duchess of Oldenburg apple
Esopus Spitzenburg apple – said to be Thomas Jefferson’s favorite!*
Fallstaff apple
Foxwhelp apple
Frostbite apple
Goof apple
Horneburger Pancake apple
Kentish Fillbasket apple
King Cole apple
Michelin apple
Nonnetit Bastard apple
Northern Lights apple
Northern Spy apple – one of our personal faves (There is also a Prairie Spy apple)
Obelisk apple
Peasgood’s Nonsuch apple
Pixie Crunch apple
Scotch Dumpling apple
Sheepnose apple
Sir Isaac Newton’s Tree apple
Twenty Ounce apple
Westfield Seek-no-Further apple
Visit this link to see even more poetic apple names. You may be inspired to do a still life painting of apples, or you can surely find a name for the pub you have always wanted to open:* https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/z
I digress.
Right now is an excellent time to stock up on apples that store well, either in your coolish back hall, in the fridge, or in your basement; someplace cool and dark. Apples that are ripening now in October have the best chance of keeping well. Pick wisely. Red Delicious, Winesap, Rome, McIntosh, Golden Delicious. Sort through your apple haul, and choose medium-sized apples, checking for bruises or broken skin. Eat the large ones now and use the bruised apples for baking or applesauce. Some apples will keep for up to five months, but you should check often to see how the ripening process is – there is a reason for some of those old sayings, and you don’t want to discover that one bad apple three months from now. More helpful hints can be found here: https://www.pickyourown.org/Apples_how_to_store_for_the_winter.php
Some apples are better for applesauce: Cortland, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, Rome. Some are better for pies: Granny Smith, Sun Crisp, Pink Lady. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so start practicing your pie crusts!
There are more uses for apples that snacks on the fly, applesauce or pie.
Our kitchen god, Mark Bittman, has a deelish recipe for Apple Crisp, with oatmeal and cranberries: https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/shawn-hubbells-apple-crisp-with-cranberry-oatmeal-topping
And here are some others: https://www.geniuskitchen.com/ideas/fall-apple-recipes-6372?c=24704
And the best use of apples (and oh, so seasonal) is apple cider doughnuts. Yumsters! https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bas-best-apple-cider-doughnuts
“And then there is that day when all around,
all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one
by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there,
and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and
twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs
in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the
tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from
your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long
before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever
was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below,
You will fall in darkness…”
― Ray Bradbury
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