It's Apple Pie Season!

Apples are ripe a bit early this year - they are dropping from the trees - time to make pie!

Apples have always been a September thing in the Northwest, waiting for those first apples to ripen right when school begins. I remember as a kid coming home from school, picking apples and biting into their juicy goodness.  Mine are organic so we always take care to look for the occasional worm. This year its been unusually hot here in Seattle, so apples are dropping from the trees!  Time to make yummy apple treats...first up: Apple Pie!






The best part of making apple pie is that all the ingredients are right at my fingertips!  I just walk out the backdoor and two apple trees offer their fruit up to me in the first rays of sunlight...I always use my Grandma Larsen's pastry recipe for the crust, and I use Grandma Opal's pie filling from Allrecipes.com - its the best!

Rolling the dough, peeling and cutting the apples is relaxing for me, I love to create and this is one of those creations that you get to devour after it's done!  Allie's boyfriend Hans helped her pick apples for me this morning.  He is back from Norway and doesn't love sweet American desserts - but he loves my apple pie! - I think because it's almost savory in it's pastry goodness.  Tonight my in-laws are visiting from Phoenix so we had a lovely dinner followed by my apple pie and ice cream...it was great to see them and spend time just catching up.

Edith and Pru lounge underneath our green apple tree.

The chickens have lots of fallen apples to peck at and eat this year, but usually they circle my feet waiting for me to drop one so they can have a treat.  Who knew that chickens would LOVE apples so much?  But this year, there are so many that they tire from eating them and go looking for other garden treats.  Just like humans, I guess they can experience too much of a good thing.  So then they just lounge among them, taking the occasional peck, secure in knowing yummy treats are close at hand.

- Rita