Melissa surprised me yesterday by bringing apples picked from a local apple orchard for the children's tea. Good ones, too — a crunchy, sweet, light green variety called Ginger Gold, and another green-blushing-to-red, tender-fleshed sweet one — don't remember the name.
"You're kidding — apples are ripe already?!"
"Not many but some. We went to pick raspberries, and they said we could try apples off the tree and if we found some that were ripe, pick more."
(I love the bounty of apple orchards. Pick one, take a bite, finish it if you like or throw it on the ground and look for a more auspicious tree.)
I'll give it a few more weeks, I think, even though some of the early apples are my favorites. Most of the year you go around eating Granny Smiths and Fujis from the grocery store, and they're pretty good, you know, the default fruit, nice with peanut butter or a slice of Tilsit cheese, but nothing really special. And then autumn comes, and you pick apples from the apple orchard and — wow! It's like a completely different fruit. Every variety is like a completely different fruit. Mind-blowing, how good the orchard apples can be in September and October.
I think I've found a recipe for Sunday-morning breakfasts this autumn: Kristin's Non-Traditional Dutch Apple Pancake. A little bit of sautéing, a little bit of baking, and you're good to go.
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