I had forgotten about the orchard. C and I had spent a wonderful day there a few years ago, wandering through the trees and gorging ourselves on apples. And because I had forgotten, it wasn’t that orchard- the one near where I currently live- that first came to mind when I was asked out of the blue if I thought going to an apple orchard would be dumb. I instead thought of the orchard we used to go to when I was a kid, which I honestly don’t recall a whole lot about.
When I did remember about the one nearby, I looked it up and discovered it was the thick of apple-picking season (which I suppose would be obvious to most). This worked out perfect as I had spent the day with nothing to do, wondering what to do the next day, when I also had nothing to do.
The next morning I drove the few miles to the orchard, parked the car, put on sunscreen and started walking. The day turned out to be much hotter than it had been for the past couple of weeks, and it turns out that apple orchards do not provide much shade. Also, I had left my water in the car. Nevertheless, I enjoyed sampling from the apples the helpful signs at the end rows said were in season and filling a bag with Jonathans.
The next part of the process was to stand in line for a half-hour waiting to pay for my pickings. It was here that my stomach cramped up and I endured it until eventually I was fortunate the bathroom was vacant. I was also fortunate I quickly found someone who accepted my explanation that I had already been waiting in line but the people I was in line with had already checked out. I added a quart of apple cider and a plastic cup of “apple cider slushie” to my purchase, sat down at a picnic table in the shade overlooking the orchard and slowly drank the slushie.
I then drove to the grocery store for ingredients to bake a pie, which seemed the only logical thing to do with all the apples. After that came research into how to bake a pie, which I had never done before, and can only scratch my head as to why I didn’t do that before going to the store, which I had to go back to for vegetable shortening… and a third time when I discovered I didn’t have enough flour. I finally got the dough mixed and into the fridge to do whatever it does in the fridge for two hours.
The recipe called for three pounds of apples. My bag had been weighed at the orchard, but they only wrote $10.25 on it. So I grabbed my food scale from the disc golf supply shelf in my outdoor storage closet only to discover the batteries were dead and I didn’t have another 9 volt. (I looked in the smoke detector and it was hard-wired with no battery backup?!) I was not going back to the store! So I Googled it. I spent the remainder of the time the dough needed to cool peeling and slicing a dozen apples on the back deck while drinking hot apple cider. I would not make anything with apples again without purchasing an apple corer.
By the time I got the lattice-top crust put together and into the oven, it was 9:30pm. My range had recently been replaced, as the broiler element had gone out on the previous one (I would have simply replaced the part had it been up to me), and this was the first time I had used this oven. I had always set the previous oven 25 degrees hotter than what the recipe called for, but I assumed this new digital one knew what it was doing. I was wrong. Also, I discovered the hard way that the oven shut itself off when the timer ended. The pie was done by 11. The recipe said I could leave it to cool on the oven rack for 8 hours so I did. I took it to work the next morning and had a piece for breakfast. It was delicious; the crust especially was perfection.
