Apple Days

October, O October, how I love you.  Fallen leaves under which last-minute beetles hide from birds, trees reach further for ending rays of sun, and market stalls burst with knobbed squashes as round and creased as the face of a well-fed village alderman; the month sidles up to ending September, and flows abundantly until street urchin November wanders into the solemnity of All Saints Day.  The life and fall colors of October are supplanted by the tangible results from tending summer gardens by row or acre, diligent fingers having crossed for the right amount of rain: this year has been particular good for apples.

At the markets, wooden crates are trucked in, waiting to fill eight-quart baskets (pecks), half-bushels, and bushels full of apples.  Four pecks to a bushel, so that makes for 32 dry quarts.  A good storage apple can last a winter, others dissolve within a month but are worthwhile for processing or quick eating out-of-hand.  Idareds picked at proper maturity can last until June in refrigeration improving in flavor with age, while JerseyMacs go for one month before giving up.  

I have found that the Paula Reds make some of the creamiest applesauce that needs little sugar; Granny Smiths do well for the long cooking that apple butter takes, and retain a nice tang after processing.  Winesaps don't come in until mid-October and are not easy to grow in New York State, but when I find them, the flavor makes it my favorite eating apple in spite of the smaller size.  It will fill your kitchen with a noteworthy aroma, is firm to the bite, and also profoundly juicy, making it an apple especially useful for cider.  And pie.

Pie!  Pie will bring good luck to your door, unite enemies, grow strong children, and relieve the ills of old age.  Timing myself, I could get a homemade pie in the oven in 25 minutes from scratch crust to the twirling ministrations of the clamped-down apple peeler.  If there was a day when it was only 24 minutes, then the choice was apple crisp: layers of apple varieties, at least two, hopefully three, piled under butter crumbs and baked till the bubbling sugars announced: done.  It was easy, healthful, and remains in the memories of once young boys who have grown up tall with kind and honorable hearts, maybe a little because of good apples put together.  

Nightfall has come, bringing the cooler temperatures that turn an apple red and cause people and animals to pull a blanket over a lap.   Dishes done, slippers on, sitting and remembering; round little Tulip is curled in tortoiseshell repose, and the city buildings are blinking lights at their tops to let airplanes see where they end in the dark.  Maybe today everyone had a piece of pie, for it's quiet out there, and few cars are traveling the roadway.  Home, I think, must be where the population is this evening.  Be a human beetle-bug under a fallen leaf blanket.  Dream of flour, butter, and brown sugar; a black dog with running children.  Apple days.  Good night.