Now that my little family has moved to Washington, let's talk apples. First of all, apples are pretty serious business in Washington and have been for years. In 1937, the Washington state legislature created the Washington State Apple Commission. Apples are a funny fruit, when you think about it. To cook them, we like to peel and core them, and have developed ingenious little machines to make this easier. Don't believe me? Google apple parers and apple corers. You can really clean these fruits up, but personally, I love the peels, especially if the apples are just off the tree, but I skip eating the core, including the seeds, which are mildly poisonous. Botanically, apples are part of the Rosaceae family (yep--roses) and are thought to have originated in central Asia, thousands of years ago. Skip and Tad and I have spent the last month driving around eastern Washington before Tad had to start school in Seattle. Apples are so important in Washington that the annual football game between the University of Washington and its eastern Washington rival, Washington State University, is known as the Apple Cup. My recent apple odyssey started a couple of weeks ago at the Red Apple, a grocery store in Winthrop south of downtown. I couldn't help but notice the bin of yellow green apples outside the store. The sign read "Organic Ginger Gold Apples, 89 cents a pound" which is a great price for apples, let alone organic apples. I thought I'd find some inside, but I didn't, so after I made my purchases, I went back in and bought four apples. They were delicious! I'd never had Ginger Golds before. The Ginger refers to the first name of the wife of the orchardist who first discovered these apples and the Gold refers to their Golden Delicious parentage. I love apples-the first yellow transparents of summer, the McIntoshes of September (I love to eat them fresh, but have also used them in pies and to make applesauce), the children of red and yellow delicious-Fuji and Johnagold-and now we have a new cousin to yellow delicious, the Ginger Gold. What I really appreciated about these apples was their freshness. Most apples that reach Seattle (and Soldotna) have been covered with a wax to help preserve them. I don't particularly like this. The flavor of this apple, fresh from the orchard, started off a little flat, then burst into a full apple flavor, almost like a cider, and when apples are fresh, they don't have that mealy flavor. I can still remember the comb honey and the bushel of tart apples that we bought in the Appalachians some forty years ago--they were small, red, and had a bright white inside. You wouldn't find them in a typical grocery store--they weren't uniform and they were small. We snacked on those little apples for a month. On the current trip, we must have driven by a dozen or more fruit stands as we went from Winthrop down toward Lake Chelan and onto Cle Elem. On either side of the road stood rows of trees laden with heavy fruit, reflecting the optimal conditions for growing apples in Eastern Washington.

Apples hold a special place in my heart. Years ago, my parents lived in the remnants of an old apple orchard in Western Washington. My father couldn't identify all the varieties of apples that grew there--grapefruit sized apples that I have never seen in a store and one variety that had a flavor reminiscent of bananas--both of which would probably be considered heirloom apples today. I never understood how an apple could be banana flavored until I came across across an article in the Atlantic magazine (May 2008), written by Corby Krummer and called Beyond the McIntosh.

For those of us who have been on diets for the last 40 years, I'll just put this one plug in for apples. One apple contains about 110 calories, very little sodium and 150 milligrams of potassium, making them ideal for everyday snacks. I was actually a little surprised to see that an apple could also supply as much as 10% of your daily requirement of vitamin C.

Tad and I have noticed a number of neglected apple trees around Seattle and we may be harvesting some windfall apples this week. It's apple season in Washington! Make sure you have your apple today!

Favorite things to do with apples:

1. Eat one. Or two. Or three.
2. Make it into something else you can eat. Apple sauce. Apple crisp. Apple pie (check out the link below for a recipe and thoughts of Tom Burford, famous apple guy, on a perfect apple pie--secret: it starts with using the right apples). Apple bread. Apple salad--otherwise known as Waldorf salad. I've even added apples to coleslaw.
3. Make it into something you can drink. Apple juice. Apple cider--hard or soft. Apple wine. Washington also has some great cider makers!
4. Make an apple into one of those wrinkled face figurines.
5. Read a book about apples. Try Apples by Roger Yepsen.

Minnow's recipe for applesauce: I use McIntosh apples and like to leave the skins on. Yep. I do that with my apple pies, too. I slice up the apples, just like for a pie, put them in a pan with a little water, add a sprinkle of cinnamon, and half a teaspoon of vanilla. Because I use McIntosh apples, I don't need to add sugar (for sweetness) or lemon juice (for tartness) but some folks do. I get the sauce going by heating the apples up on medium, then turning the heat down to low for half an hour or so. You get the best consistency if you stir occasionally. Be sure to use an apple that cooks well. The best guess for serving size is one apple per person. We usually make apple sauce as a side dish for Oktoberfest.

Minnow's tip: This one is straight from the Washington State Apple Commission: to keep your apples at their best, keep them in the refrigerator. Check out their web site for more apple information, including recipes. I've never seen a recipe for apple cookies with spelt and millet before. I'll give it a try and let you know!