apple month

eat ’em and weep

~ jama ~ 4 Comments

 
applepiealamode.jpg picture by jamesmargaret3rd

Okay, folks, I know I teased you with the world’s largest apple pie the other day, and left you salivating.

Though the recipe sounded interesting, it wasn’t something you could actually make.

So, here’s my favorite apple pie recipe. It has a streusel topping; I guess some people would call it a dutch apple pie. I like it because you don’t have to roll out 2 crusts, and sometimes having a top crust is just too much crust (and trans fats). For those of you who suffer from FOPC (fear of pie crusts), you can cheat and buy a ready-made one. I recommend the whole wheat crust that comes frozen from Whole Foods Market. It has zero trans fats, and most people can’t tell it wasn’t homemade.

APPLE CRUMB PIE
(makes one 9" pie)

Crust:

1 1/2 c sifted flour
1/2 c Crisco
1/2 tsp salt
about 3 T iced water

1. Combine flour and salt. Cut in the Crisco with a pastry blender until the mixture is crumbly.
2. Gradually add the iced water, tablespoon by tablespoon, mixing in lightly with a fork. (If it’s a humid day, you may need less water.) 
3. Form the dough into a ball. 
4. Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes.
5. Then roll out the dough between two sheets of waxed paper. (Much easier than flouring a board or counter.)
6. Lay the dough into an 8 or 9" glass pie dish; crimp the edges.

Filling:

2 lb green apples (6 cups)
3 T lemon juice
1/2 c sugar (use more or less depending on sweetness of apples)
2 T flour
1 tsp grated lemon peel

Topping:

1/2 c sugar
1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon (i always use more)
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp mace
1/4 c butter

1. Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, ginger, and mace. Mix well.
2. Cut in butter with fork until mixture is crumbly.
3. Distribute over apple filling and bake in 375 degree oven for 55-60 minutes.

The Ala Mode:
ww-1.jpg picture by jamesmargaret3rd

To top everything off, two tasty picture books to read with your pie:

The Apple Pie That Papa Baked(
Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson
(Simon and Schuster, 2007)

(Good review of Apple Pie that Papa Baked at 7-Imp recently!)

51M5H4CP2GL_SS400_1.jpg picture by jamesmargaret3rd
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
(Dragonfly Books, 1996)

thought for the week: i love the smell of rotten apples in the morning!

~ jama ~ 6 Comments

 

DSCN4269.jpg picture by jamesmargaret3rd

Need some inspiration? Wondering how to court the muse? Consider this:

"The poet Schiller used to keep rotten apples under the lid of his desk and inhale their pungent bouquet when he needed to find the right word. Then he would close the drawer, although the fragrance remained in his head. Researchers at Yale University discovered that the smell of spiced apples has a powerful elevating effect on people and can even stave off panic attacks. Schiller may have sensed this all along. Something in the sweet, rancid mustiness of those apples jolted his brain into activity while steadying his nerves."

                from A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES by Diane Ackerman 

friday feast: after apple-picking by robert frost

~ jama ~ 18 Comments

 

It would be sacrilege to celebrate Apple Month without including Robert Frost. He loved his apple orchards and his ruminations upon the fruit resulted in many poems. Besides, he was a New Englander, like my husband, and once, years ago, I got to visit the farmhouse in Franconia, New Hampshire, where Frost lived full-time from 1915-1920, and where he spent 19 summers. I remember pausing in the narrow country lane, trying hard to hear his voice in the wind. I gently touched the battered mailbox, wondering what good and bad news he had found there regarding his poems.

Today The Frost Place is a museum open to visitors mostly on weekends and afternoons from Memorial Day to the first week of October. There are educational programs and an annual conference with writing workshops. Each year, an emerging young poet is given a cash stipend and the opportunity to live and work in the house during July and August. How cool is that?

But back to the apples. In 1920 Frost moved from Franconia to Shaftsbury, Vermont, seeking “a better place to farm and especially to grow apples.”  There he planted McIntosh, Northern Spy, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and Red Astrachan, hoping to fulfill his dream of a “thousand apple trees of some unforbidden variety.”  Today there is only one tree still living from this orchard, but The Frost Museum is currently trying to restart the orchard via grafting. The Robert Frost Apple Project seeks to “create a display orchard of 20 trees composed of the historic varieties of apples as mentioned in Frost’s letter.” People from all over the country will be able to purchase a cutting to plant a Frost tree of their own. What a beautiful idea! Read more about it here.

So, sip your coffee or tea, and enjoy once again, probably the most famous apple poem ever written by an American poet.

 

AFTER APPLE-PICKING
by Robert Frost (1915)

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.

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wednesday snack: a real pip!

~ jama ~ 2 Comments

  Cover Image
GENTLE’S HOLLER by Kerry Madden
Ages 9-12, (Viking, 2005)

From one of the most heartwarming, lyrical books I’ve read recently, here’s a passage where the main character, Livy Two (12), a talkative aspiring songwriter who loves e.e. cummings (as I do), visits the bookmobile:

"I put my books on the return shelf, and Miss Attickson smiles at us from behind her desk, her short black hair tucked behind her ears. ‘Well, I was hoping I’d see y’all today, the venerable Weems tribe. I was lucky to get to make two trips to Maggie Valley in a week. That doesn’t happen near enough as far as I’m concerned. Now listen, who needs apples? I have a fine sack of apples under this desk . . . Miss Attickson continues, ‘Well, y’all children know what I say, don’t you? Books and apples go together. One of my very favorite things in this world is to curl up with a good book and a crisp juicy apple on a lazy summer afternoon. You children make that a lifelong habit, and you will fill many a lonely hour. Books and apples. Small miracles, but miracles just the same.’"

Make GENTLE’S HOLLER your next apple adventure. It will fill you up with the tender, happy, poignant music of a large North Carolina family.

And when you’re ready for more, reach for a big second helping of Kerry Madden’s next book in the Weems family trilogy, LOUISIANA’S SONG, published just this past spring:

Cover Image
LOUISIANA’S SONG by Kerry Madden
Ages 12 and up (Viking, 2007)

I am reading this book right now and loving it! Uncle Hazzard, the family dog, likes apples at his favorite treat! 
 

a heapin’ helpin’ of almanzo’s fried apples ‘n’ onions

~ jama ~ 6 Comments

Guess who came to dinner last night?  Almanzo Wilder! Well, sort of.

Since this is autumn and harvest season and all, I was in the mood to reread FARMER BOY.  Of course I was shamelessly salivating all the way through, as Laura described meal after meal full of farm-fresh produce. I marveled at Almanzo’s ability to polish off huge quantities of food, and still have room for pie (usually more than one piece)!  It was all I could do to keep myself from running to the farmer’s market, loading up on everything, then gorging myself.

I resisted this compulsion until I came to this passage

 “He knelt on the ice, pushing sawdust into the cracks with his mittened hands, and pounding it down with a stick as fast as he could, and he asked Royal,

 ‘What would you like best to eat?’

They talked about spareribs, and turkey with dressing, and baked beans, and crackling cornbread, and other good things. But Almanzo said that what he liked most in the world was fried apples ‘n’ onions.

When, at last, they went in to dinner, there on the table was a big dish of them! Mother knew what he liked best, and she had cooked it for him.”

Apples and onions? How wholesome! How healthy!! I could do that! This one simple dish really spoke to me. Onions from the dark earth mingling with apples that grew high in the sky. I loved that beautiful completeness, one which I discovered over and over again in the book.

The story takes place in 1866, when Almanzo was nine, one year before Laura was born.  The Wilders had a dairy farm up in Malone, New York, which in its prosperous years provided a sharp contrast to Laura’s pioneering childhood. Food was plentiful on the Wilder farm; lots to go around for Almanzo and his older brother, Royal, and sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice. But Almanzo was always hungry,and his insides gnawed and twisted as he waited for his turn to be served. Being the youngest, he always had to wait the longest for his food. Laura masterfully builds up this anticipation (the most effective of literary appetizers), so that when we finally read about the meal, it fills us up to the brim. 

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