Friday Favorites: Apples

I think if I had to choose only one favorite food, it would be apples. I love many other foods and types of foods, but there is just something about a nice, crisp, tart/sweet apple that makes me go, "mmm!" And then there are all of the apple by-products:  apple pie, apple butter, applesauce, and my mom's apple cake. YUM!

A couple of weeks ago, I took my nieces to an apple orchard, mainly to buy some local apples and some apple butter. Sometime, I'll take them to actually pick apples, because that can be fun, too. I also remember going with Daniel's kindergarten class on a field trip to that same apple orchard. You haven't really lived until you have gone on a field trip with a bus load of five-year-olds. We had so much fun that year going on eight different field trips!

Last night I decided to cook up some leftover apple slices that I had in the fridge. I probably could have figured out out on my own, but I got out my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook and got the right time for microwaving them. I only added cinnamon and once they were cooked, they were just the right thing for my fall taste buds. Of course, a little vanilla ice cream would have put them over the top, but those apples were just fine by themselves.

I could probably go on and on about my love for apples and how I used to decorate my house with apple-y things. We had some friends in Virginia who lived in a farm house and they had a red-and-white checkered floor in their kitchen. I loved that idea and dreamed of decorating my kitchen that way when I grew up. Miss Lenora probably made one of the best apple pies that I've ever tasted, too, except for my own grandmother's pie.

And speaking of apple pie (and then I'll stop, I promise): my Maw-Maw even made me an apple pie for my birthday when I was five years old. She knew how much I loved apple pie and I may have even requested it. We have a picture somewhere of me standing in front of her refrigerator holding my birthday pie with five candles in it.

So, now you want some apples, right? They shouldn't be too hard to find, so go on out and get some!