Apple Picking

"Aah-pull!" 

I'm as obsessed with the way Ez says apple as Ez is with eating them. So of course we had to visit an orchard and let Ez walk from branch to branch shouting "aah-pull" and gobbling up as many apples as his belly would hold while leaving a trail of half eaten cores behind him. Actually, if it were up to him he would have saved all his half eaten apples. I took the mom initiative to carefully discard those when he wasn't looking.

Apple picking has been on my fall to do list for the past two years, but it turns out Southern California's climate isn't very favorable to apples. There are a few orchards, but the season is very short and we never timed it right. This year we picked a perfect sunny but not too warm fall day, found an orchard right on the coast halfway up a windy mountain road, showed Ez the apples, got the camera ready, annnd....nothing. Ez couldn't get the apple off the branch. Then he burst into tears of frustration and refused to try again until we basically forced him. After that though, it was game on! We quickly filled our bag with at least half a dozen varieties of apple and in the past week Ez has turned down both donuts and ice cream in favor of apples. I want a maternity test.

After all that apple picking we wandered around Davenport, which you can see more of here.

Now, what to do with all those apples? Any favorite recipes you can steer me toward?

Moving right along on our Fall bucket list: