Taking in the Season

I am not alone in my love of fall in the blogsphere. It seems ever blog I read in is love with the colors, flavors, textures, and crispness of fall. 

I love fall for all the usual suspects: apple cider, the sense of renewal, school supplies, the scent of the air. I also have a bonus reason to love fall: it's when I both met and two years later married Mr. Cleaver. So the fall is very special to us both.

So this past Saturday we engaged in some traditional fall activity and went on our third annual apple-picking trip. We really liked the orchard we had been going to in Illinois, so the standards were high for our first Maine venture. It had so have a few things: 1 - a wide variety of apples, 2 - pumpkins, and 3- (most importantly) apple cider doughnuts. Seriously, I live for my once-a-year shot to eat apple cider doughtnuts hot out of the fryer. I keep thinking about trying to make them on my own, but I think it might take something away from the experience. That said, and I'm not promising anything (having still not posted an actual S'more pie recipe), don't be surprised if apple cider doughnuts appear on this blog in the next month or so.

Ricker Hill Orchards was a hit on all three points. Crisp juicy apples (organic and non), delicious hot doughnuts (weekends only), cheery pumpkins, and amazing views. Not to mention the fantastic play area.

Oh, and this is pure genius, they had giant slingshots for the rotten apples. See if you can spot Mr. Cleaver's apple in the photo above. The boy below's name is David (I didn't catch the irony until I was captioning the picture) and he asked me to take a picture of him, so I was happy to oblige. 

We got lost in the corn maze, but did solve it on our second try.

But Mr.Cleaver holds a grudge, so after we got out, he decided to mow it down.

(Totally kidding on that)

We also both gave a go at the obstacle course. Look at the following images while humming the theme to "Rocky" in your head, it makes it better.

 

 

 

 

Who do you think won? 

Not that I'm a biased judge or anything. :)

Oh and we did pick a bunch of apples too.

An Evening with William Shatner...

Saturday night was the second annual "Evening with William Shatner" with Ms. Kasey. This was a tradition started after a trip to Kuiper's Family Farm last year, enacted when my apartment had one arm chair to sit in. The William Shatner reference was coined by Kasey due to the extreme girth of our two pies.

After another trip to the apple picking farm, we convened to make some more pies, this year trimming down the size of the pies and using the extra apples to make an apple crisp .

Pie making is something that means a lot to me. Not only do I love a good fruit-filled pie, but I learned how to make a pie from father. I felt very grown up when I finally got the pie tutorial and the knowledge and experience my father shared with me is priceless, especially now that he's gone. And though I have yet to figure out how he got the crust to work with only six tablespoons of water, I try to do his gift justice not only by making pies of my own, but by sharing his lesson with any one willing to learn.

And without further ado....

My Dad's Crust Recipe 2 cups flour 1 tsp salt 2/3 cup shortening

Mix together flour and salt then "cut in" shortening with a pastry cutter or knives.

Add 6-10 Tbsps of cold water, until dough holds together. Flour working surface and roll out crusts, using half the dough for each. Makes 1 top and one bottom crust for a 9" pie tin.

The recipe for the filling comes from Myles, a stage manager and excellent baker in Portland, Maine.

Myles' Spicy Apple Pie

2 Tbsp Sugar 1/2 tsp. Cinnamon 1/4 tsp. Nutmeg 6-7 Cups peeled and sliced apples (6-7 apples per pie) 3/4 to 1 Cup Sugar 1 to 2 Tbsp. Flour 1/8 tsp. Salt 2 Tbsp. Butter

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare the pastry for two 9" pie crusts.

Combine 2 Tbsp sugar and the spices in a small bowl.

Brush the bottom pastry with milk or water and sprinkle with 1/2 of the sugar, spice and everything nice mixture.

Combine 3/4 Cup of sugar with flour and salt and mix lightly through the apples.

Heap up the apples in the pie pan.

Dot the top of the apples with the butter.

Cover with top crust and cut slits for the steam to escape.

Seal the sides of the pie crust with a fork's prongs. Brush with milk or water and sprinkle remaining sugar/ spice mixture over the top of the pie.

Cover the edges of the pie crust with foil wrap.

Bake 50-60 minutes or until crust is lightly brown.

Remove the foil 15 minutes before you take the pie out of the oven.

A word of warning! This pie could potentially make a mess in your oven if you do not take precautions. Because there are soooo many apples in it, that while cooking, it has the tendancy to leak, no matter how hard you try to seal the sides of the pie. So,sit the pie inside a larger pan with a lip for cooking so that if any juices escape you only have the pan to clean and not your oven. Also, you can line the second pie plate with foil so you only have to throw that out, instead of scrubbing your larger pan.

Get your husband to make you some homemade vanilla ice cream and serve warm.

Forget about the dishes until at least two servings of pie.