Keep it Simple: An apple or two a day
I knew this past summer there would be a glut of apples come fall when first one, then two, then three, big fruit laden branches loudly cracked and broke off from the main trunk of the Delicious tree near the storage shed. In more than 45 years of growing fruit trees I have never had one “self-prune” itself due to the large number of fruits hanging from its branches.
This past spring I sent my kids pictures of the apple trees in bloom; noting I had never seen such a spectacular display of flowers. The honey and bumblebee crews were kept busy as perfect spring weather allowed them to get out day after day and attend to their pollinating chores of the four apple and three crabapple trees. It was shaping up to be an apple bonanza the likes of which I had never seen before.
Last year was a bumper crop for apples as well and I was kept busy making applesauce, so much applesauce I had no need to make a new batch this year despite the Mcintosh trees laden with yet another bumper crop this past August. I left those apples to the deer and wild turkeys who took a shine to the windfall crop which had plopped onto the ground.
Come October the Delicious and Cortland trees were predictably laden with more apples than I had ever seen on either tree. I picked as many as I could fit into the basement refrigerator which serves as a repository for the overflow of fall garden produce as well as apples. I gave my kids apples, as much as they wanted and then some.
By the time my wife and I had left town for three weeks in Europe the middle of October I was “appled” out and had no desire to deal with another apple until next year’s crop. Returning home the second week of November there was still a surplus of apples and so, a few days before Thanksgiving I washed a half bushel of the persistent fruits, made a pie for the holiday crowd due that week and cut up and froze the rest for winter pies and cobblers. I was now finished with apples for the year; putting the crop of a lifetime in my culinary rear-view mirror as I now looked forward to an appleless Christmas holiday.
Although, the apples won’t exactly go away. I still have that second refrigerator stocked with apples and enough of the frozen fruit in the basement freezer for a half dozen pies, so these apples of mine aren’t exactly going away quietly and will be hanging around for a good part of the winter.
I will take the larger Cortland apples, cored, and then stuffed with brown sugar, raisins, flour, cinnamon, walnuts and butter, for delicious and easy baked apples on cold January evenings and crunch into the smaller and redder Delicious apples as a dessert to go with my afternoon lunch.
I doubt if the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” is based on any aspect of reality, but I have a hunch my wife and I will find out if there is any truth to the old adage as we eat our way through a dearth of apples this coming winter.
— Michael Jones is a columnist and contributor for the Gaylord Herald Times. He can be reached at mfomike2@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Keep it Simple: An apple or two a day
