Apple-tastic and fun while it lasted...

Hey kids,

It was here and then it was gone. Like a flower blooming in the desert. Spurred by an unexpected late summer/early autumn deal on a flat of fragrant and redder-than-red strawberries at Raley's, for a very short while, I blossomed into that domestic doyenne that I've always dreamt of being.

I made strawberry shortcakes, I made a metric ton of strawberry jam that we are still, incredibly, not yet tired of spooning onto our morning toast and biscuits.

The following weekend, we spent the day touring the farms and markets at Apple Hill, where you kids picked a big, industrial-sized bucket of six different varieties of apples, and we came home with a flat of plums, some pies, and a bunch of pictures.



At one stop, a lady threw apples onto an old-fashioned looking contraption that peeled, cored and sliced the fruit in three seconds flat. The day was hot and the spirals of cool, crisp, not-too-sweet apples she handed us were like little bits of heaven. Even you kids, who I fight with on a daily basis to eat your fruits and vegetables, gobbled them down and asked for more. Apples.

The next day, I found one of those apple machines at Bed Bath and Beyond. For $19.99. I was thinking that any contraption that facilitates the both of you jumping up and down and fighting over apples is worth its weight in gold.

I also got to work turning those apples into anything and everything. I made apple jam, apple crepes, apple pumpkin bread, baked apples, fried apples, caramel apples. Also plum jam, plum tart and plain plums and apples eaten out of hand. It's three weeks later, and Jakob still asks if he can peel an apple after dinner, and tonight, Wavy surprised the hell out of me by coming to bed with a half-eaten apple in hand. Crazy. Apples have even figured prominently in Jakob's recent artwork.

But, the last of the apples, maybe about four or five of them, are a bit sallow to look at, soft to the touch and sport a halo of fruit flies around them. I hate to see them go; as the apples disappear, so wanes my burst of fruit-tastic energy and creativity. There was something intrinsically GRATIFYING about making baked goods with fruit picked by the hands of my very own children.

Maybe next weekend's trip to the pumpkin patch and the resultant pumpkins and squashes will re-spark the mojo. Perhaps not. Regardless, I love you both, and I love that you love apples. How you like them apples?