On Sunday we decided to go apple picking, after passing by Eckert's General Store, Farm, and Gardening Center and watching the tractors drive by with their loads of folks headed back and forth from the orchards. It was a grey afternoon to start with, but the sun eventually came out while we were there, and it was a beautiful day to be in the orchard.
Despite the numerous amount of people there, we didn't have much of a wait to get onto the trailer, and we were directed to the trees bearing Honeycrisp and Jonathan apples. The honeycrips were what we decided we wanted, after sampling one of each--they were juicy, firm, crisp, and slightly tart. They also were huge! Apparently last year you couldn't find a large apple if you wanted one; this year you couldn't find a small one for anything! The Jonathan apples were a beautiful red color, but were not much in flavor--actually they were rather bland and watery tasting.
They were charging $1.49/lb and each bag was said to hold about 20 lbs each, so we elected to just take three bags and not fill them full. We were also picky about the quality of the fruit we picked because it was the end of the growing season for the 2 types of apples we could pick, and there were many that were split, bruised, or on the ground. It was like a treasure hunt to find the "good ones" and we had fun looking.
These are a sample of the honeycrisps we got--a grand total of about 35lbs worth (and we only ate a few while walking around).
After we got our apples paid for and run back out to the car, we wandered around their grounds for a bit, looking at ideas for plants for our yard/gardens, sampling their wares in the general store, and of course Bingo couldn't resist showing off his best "monster in the well" impersonation...
It was late afternoon when we got home, and I was too tired to think about doing much with the apples at that point; in fact, Spike was getting over some sort of cold/flu' bug he had on Saturday, and Bingo started coming down with it on Sunday evening, as was our Sophomore and GI Jane, so we kept it a low key night... Monday GI Jane and our sophomore were feeling a bit better, but Bingo was feeling worse, so he was home from school Monday and today (he ran a fever on top of the rest of the symptoms, and it sorta aggravated his asthma). I decided to use today to bake.
I used only 12 apples and ended up with 2 - 9" pies, a 9" apple crisp, and a 9x13" apple crisp. We had part of a pie and the smaller apple crisp for dessert tonight (warmed with vanilla ice cream) and did that hit the spot! I do, however, still have 2 big bags of huge apples left, so I guess there is more baking in the offing. Good thing we have a pot-luck lunch coming up at church on Sunday we will need a dessert for, as well as a cookout on Saturday afternoon we are going to--guess what I will be bringing for our contributions to those meals!
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