We took a break from newslettering these last two weeks as we worked to get our Winter issue, “Local Heroes”, to the printer. We can’t wait to share it with you in a few weeks!
In the midst of magazine busy-ness, I almost missed one of my favorite times of year, apple-picking season.
When I was a kid, fall meant apple season. A friend’s family owned an orchard and I remember racing through rows of trees with her orchard dogs, — taking care not to slip on the rotting apples — the smell of apples, brittle leaves and wet Samoyeds somehow creating an alluring, mystical scent. For a class schooltrip we went to the orchard. My mom, my siblings, and I would go several times a season, never bothering to pick a peck, we always went with full bushels, our bellies slightly aching from all the apples eaten along the way. The first time I had to get stitches, it was from slicing too deeply with a paring knife while peeling and coring apples for sauce. At one point, I told my mom I wanted to be an apple polisher when I grew up…
To me, fall will always mean apples and while I no longer live in the apple state, Virginia has a long history of orchards, ciders and, of course, apple brandy.
We celebrate all things apples with this newsletter. Inspired to visit an orchard this weekend? Follow this link to find a u-pick orchard near you.
Welcome to the Edible Blue Ridge newsletter that brings you food stories from our region and beyond. You're receiving this email because you've purchased a magazine subscription—thank you!—or you signed up via our online form. If you need to opt out at any time, there's a link at the bottom. We're glad you're here.
Thanks for reading, happy eating, and enjoy your weekend,
Lisa - Publisher & Editor
EVENTS
Have an event you’d like us to share? Email: info@edibleblueridge.com
11.04 Apple Harvest Festival - Harrisonburg
11.04 Yuletide Market - Fincastle
11.10-12 Stocked Holiday Market - Roanoke
11.11-12 Annual Oyster Roast at Cardinal Point Winery - Afton
11.11 Thomas Jefferson Wine Festival - Amherst
11.14 Solar on the Farm: Improving Your Operation with On-Site Energy - Culpeper
11.18 Apple Butter Festival - Roseland
MORE TO CHEW ON
🍎 Did you know, Virginia is the 6th largest apple producing state in the U.S.?
🌳 There are over 100 commercial orchards in Virginia that grow apples
🍎 The apple industry contributes roughly $235 MILLION to Virginia’s economy
🍏 75% of the apples grown in Virginia are used to make value-added products such as apple butter, apple sauce and hard cider.
MOVERS & SHAKERS: Patois Cider
The hard cider industry is expanding in Virginia, with growers grafting new apple varieties, the wine industry celebrating hard cider at the annual Governor’s Cup, and tasting rooms opening across the state.
From foraging apples from bygone orchards, to having a terroir-driven approach in their cider-making practices, Patois Cider stands apart from many cideries in VA. Learn more by reading, Of Time & Place: Patois Cider, which originally appeared in issue #46.
WHAT WE’RE COOKING: Spiced Apple Cake
Use a bundt, tube, or springform pan to make this tasty cake. While you may be tempted to eat it right out of the oven, I recommend waiting a day and enjoying your first slice with a cup of coffee in the morning. This allows time for the apples to soak more deeply into the cake, lending to a softer center and crisped outer edge.
Ingredients
For the apples
6 local apples, of any variety ( I use a mix)
1 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup light brown sugar
For the cake
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 ℉ Lightly grease a bundt or springform pan and set aside. Peel, core and chop apples into 1” pieces. Toss them in a bowl with ¼ cup brown sugar, cardamom and cinnamon and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, sugar, cider and vanilla. Whisk wet mixture into dry ingredients until fully incorporated. Pour half the batter into your greased cake tin. Spread half the apple mixture over the batter, then cover with remaining batter. Spread the rest of the apples along with their juices over batter. Bake for 90 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before transferring cake to a serving platter.
POEM OF THE WEEK
After Apple-Picking
By Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
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