A pie never seems to last very long in our house especially if it is the first pie of the year! Even though its early August I have several apple trees that mature around now.  If all goes well the 16 varieties (18 trees) I grow will produce fresh apples well into October.  It is always a pleasant surprise to suddenly find apples falling to the ground at this time of year heralding the beginning of the apple season.  Once they start to fall one must shift gears from the growing mode to harvesting and processing. 

Early apples generally don’t keep very well and under the high summer temperatures they ripen and spoil quickly.  After eating last year’s apples and over-priced one’s from New Zealand most of the year the chance to eat a fresh apple right off the tree is such a joy.  After watering this morning I gathered up some of the fallen apples and picked a bunch off the “Pristine” (that is the variety name) apple tree along with a few apples from the “William’s Pride” tree.  The Pristine apples are light yellow with a blush of red on the sunny side when ripe (see the photo above).  Their early nature comes from its Yellow Transparent heritage along with it’s poor keeping qualities (who cares at this time of year).  While not my favorite eating apple, they make wonderful pies and apple sauce and… they are early!

The Turbo Cooler In Action
Is that an uneven edge I see?As mentioned elsewhere, I’m not much of a pie maker but with Sue gone and Alice (my daughter is a fabulous baker) at work I needed to step up to the plate and take things all the way on my own.  Late this afternoon I peeled, assembled and baked a pie that turned out quite well.  It is not pretty, but mine never are.  Coming out of the oven at about 6:00 pm with the assistance of our turbo cooling system, we had our first piece at 7:15.  As I’m writing this I’m nibbling on it.  We like to refer to it as “evening out the edge”, there’s nothing worse than an uneven pie edge… only problem is that after everyone does their edge evening as they pass through the kitchen the pie rarely sees the light of the next day!  No problem...lots of apples yet to come!

<< Back to main