Apples are the new Tomatoes
By Kevin Grzyb on Oct 14, 2005 5:55PM
As fall descends upon us we weep for the last “hurrah” of our summer gastronomical fetish and with a heavy heart resign ourselves to sobbing through the last few meals that we can make with homegrown tomatoes. Soon we’ll do up a batch of fried green tomatoes with those late comers who didn’t quite make it to their true hue before the first frost. Since our family has long lost the tradition of home canning the garden vegetables for winter, and as we live in an urban apartment with little more than an herb garden perilously dangling off the railing of our porch as it stands, there is no bounty to be canned. (just wait until we get a house, with a yard…our own yard…with homegrown tomatoes…everywhere!!!! [my wife is gonna kill me])
Fall on the other hand does bring good things: an end to the oppressive heat, clothes that hide our obvious love for food and apples. The greatest thing about apples is that they’re apples and they don’t really need to be anything more, and they are becoming remarkably similar to tomatoes in all of the good ways. Just as we’ve raved about not knowing a tomato until you’ve had one picked straight off the vine and sliced up with a pinch of salt while it’s still warm from the sun and the juice dribbles down your chin because you can’t keep from smiling, there is nothing like an apple picked straight off the tree that crunches when you bite into it and washes your taste buds in a tangy/slightly sour rush and finishes in a subtle sweetness. Oh yeah, there are apples like that. Big beautiful bushels of them, whole majestic orchards; acres and acres of beautiful apples that you can make your own, with a little effort.
There are apple orchards that let you pick your own apples less than an hour drive from the city. Now, you may not have a car, but you know someone who does. Get a couple of people, jump in the jalopy, or dad’s Lexus (if you have the means) and hit the road for a fun weekend afternoon, you don’t even have to get up early. There are orchards in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan that are all day tripable. We like to toss on our new fall sweater, get a few people together, grab the Nerf football and head out pick a bushel of apples, find a diner in a small town we’ve never been to for lunch and kick around for the afternoon. Maybe we even get a map and resign ourselves to stay off the interstates and take a long slow look at the colors of this great flat state as it reveals its autumnal glory. Many of the orchards have pumpkin patches, hayrides and cider pressing, so check the websites and see what interests you, be the first on your block to come home with one of the cool blue pumpkins.
When you get back to the city divide the apples up and figure out what you’re going to do with your stash. Some are better for eating, some are better for baking, (talk to the farmers, they know more about fruit than the hippy produce dude with the pierced eyebrow at Whole Foods, it’s almost like it’s their livelihood) we’re not going into a Forrest Gump shrimp dish diatribe to show the diversity of the apples culinary prowess, you’re on the internet, Google “apple recipes” and get to looking (about 7,920,000 this morning). There is little better than picking apples on a cool crisp late October Saturday in the last vestiges of fall and then figuring your way around making your first apple pie on the following day on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Then make a batch of chili, invite some friends, watch the Simpsons and eat homemade apple pie with vanilla ice cream (if you make the ice cream too, double bonus points)
Northern Spy and Macoun are the names of two of the hundreds of varieties of apples (some of which are heirloom, or antique, just like Green Zebra and Black Krim are heirloom tomatoes) that you can find in our area. These two specifically are Chicagoist’s favorite. So get out there and eat some apples, because as they cliché “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Enjoy.
Picture from stanford.edu, nancysranch.com