apple picking

On Saturday, Dan and I went apple picking at nearby Hope Orchards.  I actually used to come apple picking here sometimes with my grandmother and cousins when I was little.  At first I didn't recognize it, but when one of the women who works there was directing us on where to go, it suddenly came flooding back to me.

The orchards pick different apples throughout the apple season and when we went there were Northern Spies, Macouns, Empires and Spartans.   Dan was very excited to go apple picking for the second time in his life.  We took our apple picking duties very seriously and "sampled" each of the varieties before deciding which to pick.  Mmm. There's nothing like an apple fresh off the tree.

The Northern Spies were by far our favorite.  Learning about apples is kind of like learning about wines.  Here's what the Orchard's website has to say about Northern Spies, "The white flesh is juicy, crisp and mildly sweet with a rich, aromatic subacid flavor. Its characteristic flavor is more tart than most popular varieties, and its flesh is harder/crunchier than most. It is a good dessert apple and pie apple, that is also used for cider. Further, the Northern Spy is also an excellent apple for storage, as it tends to last longer due to late maturation and lower sugar conent."

So, we focused our picking efforts on the Northern Spies, but threw a few Empires and Spartans in our bag for good measure.  (The Macouns didn't make the cut.)  By the way, we picked two total bags and each one weighed approximately 17.6 lbs!! That's a LOT of apples.  Luckily, one of these bags is going to my mom....I'm running out of apple things to make! (Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still...seventeen pounds is a lot of apples.)

Dan also liked to use apple picking as a way to show how much taller he is than me (and the other 99% of the population).  We'd walk through the rows of trees and he'd keep walking past these trees with great apples on them and it took me awhile to figure out what he was doing.  It turns out that Dan just liked to find trees with apples up so high that nobody else could possibly reach them, like in the picture above and the ones below.

 

Here we both are reaching for that same impossible apple.  Yup.  Rubbing it in my face.  Can you tell how much Dan's enjoying it? 

Sigh.

Anyway, I hope you're excited for some more apple recipes...coming soon. Plus, there will be more from our weekend/week!  Haha, gripping, I know. But I'm excited to share it with you!