FALL APPLE PICKING AND APPLE PIE
Ahhh fall. My favorite season. The crisp air, the cooler temps, the changing leaves. And of course, the apple picking!!! It's my fourth fall in New England and I have yet to miss a year without apple picking. So Sunday was my day off and it was predicted to be a lovely one. (It turned out to be cloudier than expected, but it was still rather warm.) Normally I like heading to a different orchard each year. But this year I was being lazy and just wanted to go somewhere where I knew there were bathrooms and cider donuts. (yeah, seriously) So I we went to Honey Pot Hill out in Stow. I'd actually been here twice before. And on one of those trips, it was raining, so there weren't too many ppl. So I was pretty surprised when we pulled up and found the place was teaming with families and pickers. Basically, I have never picked with so many people and seen so few apples on the trees.

Little did we know that Sunday was the last picking day for Honey pot hill (which i found odd, since I've definitely picked later into the season, but maybe it was an early year or something). Anyway, the place was PACKED. There were 3 parking lots and in the one where we parked, there were a least 100 cars. As you can imagine, the orchards were also full of people, especially noisy children. We started off looking for Macs, and quickly found that most of the fruit was on the ground, or had been picked bare. Luckily, as we kept walking, we eventually found some trees with apples. We did have to climb ladders to get at them, but we filled half our bag and moved on to pick other varieties. (I was also unhappy to see a large snake, even if it was just a garter snake)

We moved on to pick some Spencer apples. And luckily, found much more of these. They were also much larger, so we got some good ones. I picked a man-apple for Leah, but forgot to give it to her later on. We filled our large bag pretty quickly and made our last stop at the store, where we picked up 2 dozen cider donuts (mostly for other ppl) and I got a quart of apple cider! (I love apple cider, I drink it throughout fall and winter). So even though there were so many ppl at Honeypot, I was still happy to go picking and enjoy some lovely changing foliage.

So after picking, you of course have to make an apple pie. In years past, I'd always make the crust myself, but I was being super lazy and just decided to buy a crust at the market. This would be a bad idea. My second bad idea was to follow an actual recipe. In the past, I've always eyeballed my pie filling. I don't know why I felt I needed a recipe this time, other than the fact that it'd been a while since I'd made a pie and I didn't want to screw it up.

Here are all the apples lined up on my kitchen counter (Tom washed them).And here's my pie. It looks pretty, but looks are quite deceptive...
First, the crust really lacked flavor. So even though it looked nice, it didn't taste wonderful. I've learned my lesson and will make my own crust next time. The second problem was the actual filling. First, the Spencer apples don't hold up well to cooking and ended up more like applesauce, so that was disappointing. The second problem was with the recipe itself. I used one from Cook's Illustrated and it called for far too much sugar. (I even felt this way as I was mixing it with the apples). This resulted in the sugar turning into a sugar syrup that soaked into the bottom crust and caused the crust to stick to the bottom of the pan. (It also leaked out of the sides of the pie and the pan ended up stick to the cookie sheet). At any rate, I'll be going back to my method of eyeballing next time.

The thing is, pie really isn't my thing. I'm really so much better at making tarte tatins, so I'll be doing that Saturday night, and am sure that will turn out much better. Stay tuned for that.