A Great Fall-ish Day ... Minus the Heat

Today came very close to being a perfect fall day. The two things that kept it from being so were:

1) sick kids (well, Aidan's on the mend now but Grace is in the throes of it)
2) the very un-fall-like temperature, hitting the mid/high 80's today with nasty humidity. Our air conditioner is on ... in October.

OK, now that those two glitches are out of the way, let's just pretend my kids are healthy and full of glee, and let's just pretend that there's a delicious tang in the crisp, fall air. Ah, now the picture is set.

We left mid-morning and took a short drive to a local nursery/farmer's market-type place, which is always a fun place to visit in the fall. (Yes, Grace is sick, but I simply could not spend one more minute in that house, and some fresh air wouldn't hurt her one bit.). The place was loaded with mums of all colors and sizes, ditto with the pumpkins, and there were scores of Halloween decorations as well as a very small petting zoo, which the kids loved (but didn't touch). I was in heaven -- this is my favorite time of year, and there's nothing quite like the sharp, sweet smell of freshly picked apples, the mellow scent of pumpkins, and the bit of spice from the mums. Add to that the fresh farmy smells of hay bales and corn stalks and you have a perfect olfactory joy-ride.

We decided to celebrate the arrival of Don's first paycheck by making a few purchases: a fairly large pumpkin (gret for carving in a few weeks), a giant cornstalk, a velvety deep red mum (my favorite), a bag of fresh apples, and a gallon of apple cider. Nothing says "autumn" like that combination. When we got home, I set to work decorating the front steps of our house with the cornstalk and pumpkins (my dad bought 4 small ones a few days earlier) and mums. It's delightfully festive. This was the first bright spot of the week for me, after playing nursemaid to sick children. I was happy. Not perfectly happy -- we had to, sadly, back out of our NY city night-on-the-town outing, and that is a big sore spot. But the taste of autumn this morning did soothe some of that sting.

Ah ... our Fall Day continues! Get ready for this one ... I decided to make an apple pie. I make apple crisp fairly often (an easy, incredibly delicious recipe), but a pie is a little more work so I don't do it often. In fact, I don't bake often at all -- I think I am more of a cook, rather than a baker. Oh, don't get me wrong -- I love to eat baked goods ... I'm just not into making them so much. But when I do, I thoroughly enjoy myself ... and thoroughly enjoy the outcome! With some flourish, I got out my favorite apple pie recipe and re-read the history behind it:

From Salem Cross Inn, West Brookfield, MA "Apple pie is the dessert of choice in this 1705 farmhouse, now a country inn. Why? The inn is home to New England's Annual Beehive-Oven Baked Apple Pie Contest. This 1993 grand champion pie was baked to blue-ribbon deliciousness in the Inn's 300-year-old brick beehive oven, and now appears on the Inn's Thanksgiving menu."

Yes, I am a true history geek -- even my recipes have to have some kind of history in them! :) While I don't bake in a 300-year-old beehive oven (now wouldn't that be cool, Chef Ramsay!), this pie is always a winner. I had a helper this time, my little chef in the making. Aidan helped dump in all the ingredients, and his favorite part was using the Pampered Chef apple-peeler-corer thing (which never works as well as they say it does). We cheated on the pie crust, using a frozen Pillsbury roll-out number, but that's fine with me. The last time I made a true pie crust, with dough and rolling pin, was ... 10 years ago, crammed in my tiny galley kitchen with a huge bag of apples and my friend Jeff, baking two pies of this same recipe. (We also baked quince tarts, from the fruit of our quince bush/tree, and they were nasty. Some memories are best forgotten, I suppose). Jeff's in another state, and I have two kids now, so Pillsbury will do the trick. It's in the oven now, filling the house with the warm, cozy, autumnal smells of honey and apples and cinnamon.
Yes, it has been a near-perfect autumn day. Would it have reached perfection if my kids were well ... if it wasn't 80 and humid ... if we finished it off this evening in Manhattan ... ? Sure. But whaddya gonna do ... I'll relax tonight, in just a few minutes, with a piece of apple pie, a glass of cider, and our Blockbuster rental, The Queen ... all which comes pretty close to curing all ills.